Familiar Faces

“I’ll be taking my fifteen,” I told my manager.

“Got it,” He replied.

After that was over, I left my counter and headed towards the backroom that’s located at the corner of the coffee shop.

To get there, I have to walk through a room that is adorned with white walls filled with landscape paintings and odd self-motivational quotes in English, followed by a fair amount of seats located on the right side of the wall and the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans permeates the air.

Once I arrive at the corner of the room, I open the wooden door, revealing an array of shelves that have tons of cardboard boxes precariously stacked on top of them. To the back end of the room, there’s another door where within it lays a stock of coffee beans, albeit I’ve never tried to enter it.

As I walk through the hall of boxes, on my left appears a table, two chairs, a locker room sitting behind it, and a boy sitting on one of the chairs as he’s playing one of his games.

“Ah,” Kira looks up at me, “Taking your break?”

“Yeah,” I replied as I sat down across from him, opening my phone in the process.

“How are you feeling?” Kira puts his phone on the table as he looks at me, “Have you gotten used to it?”

“It’s still a bit nerve-racking, but I more or less got the idea,” I let out a wry laugh as I scratch my cheek.

“You’ve been working for two weeks, so you don’t need to worry,” Kira waves his hand, “I’ve been here for two years, and I still get yelled at sometimes, hahaha…”

“I’m surprised…” I slightly lean forward, “Your explanation was really easy to understand, so I thought you had it all together…”

“Ehh? You think so?” Kira gave out a smirk.

“Yeah!”

No.

The reason why I’m still confused about everything is because of how half-assed your explanations were.

The person who taught me the most was a person who has been working here for a month.

“I remember back when I was still new to this, a lot of people relied on me since I knew a lot about coffee! Knowing the history of how each coffee beans are made is the key factor in brewing great coffees!” Kira enthusiastically exclaimed.

“Ohh… Is that so?”

“Yeah! Like for example—”

After that, Kira spent around ten minutes explaining to me how certain beans were processed, and how they became the way it is.

Throughout that explanation, the only thing I really got is that he’s a coffee nerd and something about civet coffee’s labor fascinates him so much that he wants to visit the country it was made in to analyze its process.

Truthfully speaking, it was pretty interesting to hear the things he says despite my lack of understanding of most of the terms he spouted out. He’s really passionate when it comes to these kinds of things, and I respect his love that he’s willing to share it with a new employee like me.

However, after he was done with his rambling and went back to his work, the only thing that remained in my mind was,

Annoyance.

Though I wonder where I can assign this feeling on.

Was it my inability to understand him, or his inability to give me a chance to ask questions?

---

Five minutes have passed since his ramble, which means that my break is over, which also means that I get to go back to the front counter serving coffee to customers that want to consume a butt load of caffeine to be slightly more productive than usual.

Since I’m on my second shift, it means that I’m given the job of brewing the coffee, so my nose is constantly struck with the caramelized smell and the sound of boiled water making a foamy noise as it makes contact with the coffee and milk. Once I finished brewing them, I would either pass them off to one of the workers or send them to the tables myself.

Since I’m only doing this part-time, I can only do this job after my classes are finished, though I would usually take evening shifts from five pm to nine pm. My classes only last for four hours, five at most, so it’s a pretty flexible schedule.

*Cling cling*

“Welcome!” I put on a smile and looked towards the entrance door on the right.

A woman with red hair, glasses, and a business suit while carrying a laptop bag in her right hand stormed towards the counter, and started ordering a caramel latte with a cheese and egg sandwich; as per usual.

Once she’s done, she says her thanks and continues to sigh as she sluggishly heads towards the far back side of the long sofa and places her laptop down. She stretches her arms and scratches her eyes before hunching forward to delve into her work.

“…”

I’ve seen that figure so many times, and every single time, she always comes in looking like she’s about to collapse if I just blew on her face. So much so that I started developing my method of making the latte as fast as possible to make it less bad for her.

Once I finished brewing her latte, I placed it on top of an oval tray and quickly headed over to her table.

“Here you go, ma’am,” I place them down on her table.

“Thanks,” She looks up at me with a small smile on her face before going back to her laptop.

“You’re welcome,” I lightly bowed as I left.

Seems like the bags under her eyes have gotten bigger…

Opposite the woman's spot, three boys occupy the space—one engrossed in his laptop, another flipping through notebooks, and the third absorbed in his phone

“Hey, have you finished this section yet?” The one holding the phone asks the boy who’s on his notebook.

“Yeah. We just need to focus on these two key points and we should be done with the main research.” He replied.

“Alright. What do I need to look up chief?” He asks as he opens the search engine.

“For now, keep an eye on these two subjects,” The notebook boy points at his book, “I’ll try looking for the bottom points.”

“…”

It’s been a week since they’ve worked on that project.

I wonder how far they’ve gotten…

“HAHAHA, No waaaaay!”

To my left, a group of friends occupies the far corner of the lengthy sofa, their animated conversation punctuated by exaggerated movements as they savor their drinks.

“Tch…”

Why’d they have to come again?

And here I thought peace would come after their last argument…

Eventually, I head back to my brewing station and clean up a bit of the stains that were left behind, when the entrance doorbell rings again revealing a couple that looks oddly sad as they head towards the counter.

“…”

I’ve never seen them before…

“Welcome!” The person on the counter shouts out.

“…”

Both of them silently look at the menu.

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…I’ll have one Frappuccino please,” The girl said as she raised her head.

“Understandable! Anything else for you sir?”

“…I’ll take a hot black coffee.” He replied.

“Understandable! That’ll be—”

“…”

I’m surprised.

I think after getting treated silently for that long, I would’ve just fumbled my words on accident from sheer surprise.