The Sugar Flower Cafe

The scenery outside changed to what looked like a quaint little village in the mountains. Well, she probably wouldn’t get much business here, but Anna had said that part of this was helping people around her age. Maybe there was someone here that needed her help. She slipped out from behind the counter and looked around outside. It was definitely a cozy little town that didn’t look to be more than maybe a thousand people or so. She really probably couldn’t expect too much business here. Anna would be helping her save money by being her only supplier so she hoped the operating costs of running here would help balance things out. She just really wanted to be able to keep her café open as long as possible. She’d been saving up since she’d left the White Fang… She really just wanted to be able to share her love of tea and other drinks with people. She went back inside and set about cleaning up as best she could. Things were quiet for a bit until she heard the bell ding. She turned around and saw a young man dressed in raggedy clothing that was much, muchtoo small. Her ears went back a little bit. She didn’t want to be alone in the café with a man, but it wasn’t like she was going to turn away anybody that came in especially if they were customers. She smiled at him despite her anxiety. “Um. I don’t have much money to spend extra…but could I spend some time here…? Could I also have some water…?” His voice was soft, extremely quiet, and the only reason she caught what he said from across the café was her Faunus hearing. No normal human would’ve been able to catch what he said. She could feel his soul was in tatters and not very active compared to someone like Robin or the rest of the people she’d met so far… It seemed like he’d been through absolute hell. Her heart went out to him. If it hadn’t been for Tukson’s kindness, then she wouldn’t have been able to open the Sugar Flower Café. She nodded and beckoned him over. “Come on in. You’re free to spend as long as you want here, or at least until I close in about four hours.” Well, she’d be running over tonight because she needed to talk to Summer to see if she could bend the laws for Weiss to get an assistance Pokémon. Something large enough to brace against her would be sohelpful. She didn’t know how Summer would bend laws like that, but she hoped that she’d be able to… Weiss needed way more help than Blake herself could provide. “Would you prefer a cup or a mug for the water? I don’t carry bottled water.” He hesitantly came in. Blake’s heart dropped as she saw how skinny he actually was. She really shouldn’t just give out food but…he clearly needed it. “Actually, would you like some tea instead?” she asked. “I have all sorts of different brews… It’s afternoon now, so I wouldn’t recommend caffeine unless you’re planning on staying up late. How about a fruity blend?” “But…I don’t have money to pay you.” “This one’ll be on the house.” Tea really was pretty cheap. She set about fixing him a mug of hot tea which she hoped would bring him some warmth. He had a winter coat on but it was ratty and too small. His mop of messy black hair and thick-rimmed glasses did give him a distinctive look. He was clearly really poor… She wished Hubert and Edelgard were down here to man the kitchens, but they were dealing with their apartment’s wares and putting together everything. This was so hard to do on her own now. She could deal with a large influx of customers, but attempting to do everything on her own… Yeah, she was a bleeding heart. “Are…you sure?” She nodded. “Positive.” She fell silent and let the tea brew, then pulled the infuser out and slid the mug across the counter. “If you’ll give me a little bit, I can get you something to eat. Something warm.” Thankfully, she knew how to cook and bake and had been in the kitchen pretty much as long as she could remember. Cooking and baking were truly her passions, but she did enjoy tea and sharing drinks with other people. Anything that could bring people happiness… She was more than happy to do it. “T-Thank you…” “What’s your name? I’m Blake.” “K-Kurusu Akira. Hi, Blake-san.” “It’s nice to meet you, Kurusu-san.” Thankfully she knew about honorifics, at least on a basic level. She could reciprocate his desire to use honorifics. She wasn’t from his culture, so she felt fine giving out her first name and allowing him to call her by it. Some places in Menagerie were more like central Mistral where given names were said second and people referred to each other by family names until they were close. But Kuo Kuana wasn’t like that. It was more like northern Mistral and Vale in that regard. She slipped back into the kitchen and found the supplies Anna had left for her. She looked around and put some recipes together, then started cooking. It was a quick but hearty meal, one that would hopefully warm Akira and help him feel fuller. She wished she could help him with clothes. Those rags he wore weren’t anywhere near warm enough for winter. It was January and it had felt cold even for winter when she’d gone outside. Of course, she didn’t have her winter coat on when she’d gone outside, so maybe that was it. All he had was a ratty coat and some too-small clothes that didn’t cover him enough. Maybe she could take him to a thrift store in Vale or surprise him or something… Granted, clothes weren’t exactly her strong suit. She came out a little while later with the meal and sat it in front of him. He’d finished his tea and she took his mug, then put it in the sanitiser. She brewed him a fresh cup and sat it in front of him. “This is eating into your profits, isn’t it…?” he asked, looking down. Blake nodded. “Technically, yes, but you clearly need to eat. It’s okay. I won’t go under by giving one person a couple mugs of tea and a meal once in a while.” She really didn’t have the heart to charge him for anything. He clearly needed help. She really ought to have charged him especially since there were no other customers in the café right now, but she just legitimately did not have it in her to treat him poorly. He looked like… Well, it reminded her of herself after she’d gotten out of the initial panic of running from Adam. She just couldn’t treat someone that had clearly been abused, neglected, or both badly. He clearly had a hard life and she couldn’t help but have her heart bleed as she looked at him. “Where are you from, Blake-san? You have an odd accent…” he asked. Blake’s ears twitched. “Abroad.” She didn’t know anything about the world she was on currently, so she couldn’t lie and pin down an exact place. She wasn’t sure if he would catch her in a lie or not. He hadn’t seemed to catch her ears or anything like Robin or others had caught. She was still mortified that so many people had caught onto her so quickly. But the spells Anna had used were apparently low grade and would account for most people. The way Robin’s mind had run and the fact that the women she’d met on Filgaia were literal goddessesmeant that she really couldn’ avoid them detecting her. Akira frowned but nodded. Blake slipped behind the computer and started accessing different pages. She could thankfully read a fair few languages and it seemed like there was enough mutual intelligibility between the languages she knew and these worlds that she could read fairly easily. She typed in Valian and got a large amount of search results. Apparently the language was called ‘English’ on this world… There were native speakers of it the world ‘round and it was one of the most widely spoken languages. Apparently the UK and ‘the United States of America’ were two of the larger population centers. “I’m from the US,” she told him. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth, but she needed to come up with some sort of backstory that would fit her… Akira nodded a bit. “What made you move to Japan and open a café out here in this little town…?” Yeesh, he was really pushing but, at the same time… It seemed like he just wanted someone to talk to. “My parents were actually world travelers; I was born and raised in the US the first couple years of my life until we started nation hopping. I’ve learned a bunchof languages. I just really liked Japan and thought a small town suited me better than a big city.” She was currently using the ‘Google’ search engine to look things up. Apparently Japan was an island nation that was very mountainous and had numerous very large cities with millions of people. In that respect, it wasn’t that much different from Remnant. There were numerous large cities in each kingdom, but even so… Most people didn’t live outside of the established cities. There were still millions who lived in small villages and towns outside of the big cities, but in the end, most of the population was concentrated in large cities that were easier to protect than the outskirts. “Wow… That sounds like a fun life.” “It…had its perks but also its dangers.” She rubbed the back of her neck, her ears going down. She learned a lot of languages and didn’t have much in the way of formal education, but it had been fraught with danger. Traveling over land meant risking Grimm attacks on the White Fang. This world apparently had far, far less wilderness than Remnant did. There were so manycorners of the world that lay untouched by human or Faunus hands, let alone seen by their eyes. People like the Branwen tribe and other tribes in central Mistral were some of the few that could survive so far out… She had no idea how people did survive that far out. It was crazy to think about, but they managed somehow. “Dangers?” “I’d rather not talk about it.” She really would rather not think about the people that had lost their lives to illnesses like malaria or such. They did what they could to avoid sickness, but being that far out and going from city to city… They didn’t have the resources to hire escorts or have everyone go on airships unless they were going to another kingdom. It just wasn’t cost effective to use the funds of the Fang to make sure everyone was safe unfortunately… Her parents often paid out of pocket for those sorts of expenses and they just did nothave that kind of money. She had grown up poor and knew it, but she had never wanted to for love and warmth… Unless she was in Atlas. Fuck Atlas. “I did get to meet a lot of neat people over the years, though. I saw a lot of things most people would never see. And I got to experience a lot of different cultures and learn a lot of other languages that I never would’ve learned otherwise.” She smiled. Despite those times being fraught with difficulty and danger, she did miss those years… She wished she hadn’t met Adam. She would likely have gone back to Menagerie with her parents, or at least done something better with her life than become a radical terrorist for several years. She was trying to atone in her own way, but she knew she could never get back those lives that she had ended. Man, woman, child… It hadn’t mattered to Adam. If he deemed them enemies, then they needed to get gone. And she had killed so manypeople… She shook herself mentally and released the thoughts. Those wouldn’t get her anywhere, not anymore. “So what do you do? I take it you’re a student?” she asked him. He nodded a bit, looking down at the meal in front of him. She frowned. “Did I upset you?” “School’s…just really hard is all.” His voice was quiet. She could feel his soul dropping in activity, not that it was very high in activity in the first place. He had clearly been through absolute hell. He honestly seemed about as dangerous as a half-drowned puppy. She still wasn’t comfortable being alone with a male like this, but he really didn’t seem like the type that would lash out, not without some seriousprovocation. Everyone had their limits, of course, but it really seemed like he’d be the type that would only lash out if it was life or death. “I’ve actually never been to a school before. My parents educated me themselves. I know I’m missing a lot due to it, but I’m intelligent enough. I know plenty about a lot of things; it’s just like history and such that I’m missing big gaps.” She knew people, culture, and language above all else. “What’s it like?” He had said it was hard but…even still. She was curious. “Rigorous. Intense. People are mean.” He sighed. She could feel something weighing on him. Something was clearly not quite normal about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. His aura spark didn’t give much up… His heart was heavily guarded against other people. The scarring around his heart was incredibly deep and thick. She could still sense his spark, but it was difficult even for her with as good as her aura-sensing abilities were. There was no aura on this planet in particular, but people still had souls.His soul was deeply scarred and not very active due to the way he’d been repressed during his life. How he’d been repressed, though, she didn’t know. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Even his main aura flows were guarded and it made him difficult to read. He was soguarded she really didn’t know how to read him entirely… “Teenagers are awful.” “I’ve…honestly never really been around teenagers in an environment like that, so I wouldn’t really know.” It was hard to relate to someone when she’d been a world hopper for a good chunk of her life without a shred of any sort of formal education. She knew how to read and write in numerous different languages, but history and such? She really didn’t know the most about it… At least outside of Menagerie’s history. Thatshe knew plenty about. “They can be somean and awful… They’re snide and turn away from people that don’t conform.” “The nail that sticks up will get hammered down, huh?” She cast him a sympathetic glance. She wasn’t the biggest fan of collectivistic cultures. They had their upsides, of course, but they also had their downsides… People weren’t allowed to be themselves truly and were just pushed down and forced to conform. That was why she liked Vale… It was the most individualistic society on Remnant even though that also came with its difficulties. But it was better than somewhere like central Mistral or Atlas where conformity was absolutely expected. Akira nodded, and she could feel the misery roll off of him in waves. She got out from behind the counter and sat across from him. “Again, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want to, or at least until I close which will be a few more hours.” Though she would have to explain about the change and why he wasn’t home… She had lied to him about where she was from, but her backstory wasn’t a lie. Her parents hadbeen world travelers and she’d gone with them in their time around. She just… She was really stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Thank you… I don’t want to go home.” He sighed. “I wish I could let you stay with me, but I don’t want to get the authorities riled up.” She shook her head. Granted, they wouldn’t even be able to find her, considering the café didn’t stay in one spot all the time. She still didn’t want to invite potential issues with local authorities. It was just best to let him stay put then allow him to come as he pleased. She still wasn’t thrilled about being alone with a man like this, but…he seemed about as gentle as her father. His soul wasn’t one of violence and harm… He just wanted to be accepted for something she couldn’t quite pin down. He was obviously doing something that made him stick out like a sore thumb. For some reason, though, she just could notpin down what was going on with him. Akira sighed and nodded. “Adults are terrible…” Blake’s ears twitched a little bit. “I mean…not all of them are. My parents are incredibly good people, my caretaker for the past few years was kind and selfless, and my mentor is one of the most intensely selfless people I’ve evermet. I won’t say that your experience hasn’t been awful, but not every adult is a terrible person. A lot can be, though.” Her ears went down. “There was a man that groomed me and treated me awfully when I was a lot younger.” She didn’t want to say much more beyond that. Talking about Adam was hard with anybody. She still wasn’t the fondest of being alone in the café with Akira, but he really seemed relatively harmless. His soul felt like it’d been through a woodchipper due to whatever neglect he’d been through. “How old are you?” “Eighteen.” “And you’ve opened a café…? How?” “Lots of saving and support from my caretaker.” She shrugged. For her, with a small support system, it wasn’t hard to do what she wanted to. Of course, applying for loans and such was difficult and not something she understood inside and out. Tukson had helped her since he was a fair bit older than her and had had to go through the process in order to open up his bookstore. He managed to stay afloat, but after running her own business for a while, she could definitely see it wasn’t going to be easy to stay open long term. Anna being her supplier would help, but if she only got one customer per block of time, it was really going to run her harshly. Especially now that she suddenly had three employees to pay. Well, she’d pay Weiss when she could get her strength back, but still, her other bills aside from food would bump… She was definitely walking a thin line. “I see…” He sighed. “I really just wish that I could work here or move out or something…but Japan’s laws are reallystrict on youth…” Blake leaned across the table and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” Her heart really did go out to the poor boy. She didn’t know what to say to him. He didn’t seem thatmuch younger than herself and he’d had a hard life… Not that her own hadn’t been hard, but everyone had their burdens to bear. He’d clearly been neglected by his parents in some shape, way, and form, considering the state of his clothes. “Actually, I might close early today when we get done here.” She just… She would need to meet with Summer, of course, but she really couldn’t help but think about the state Akira was in. He clearly needed new clothes, but if he couldn’t afford something as simple as a mug of tea or coffee from a café… Yeah, she hoped she could find a thrift shop in Vale and get back by time she needed to meet with Summer. He looked down. “Okay.” “I’ll have a surprise for you next time you come; I promise.” She smiled at him and he looked up at her, his eyes full of emotion. She could feel his soul churning in his body, not really sure what to make of what she was saying. She wouldn’t be able to get him a whole wardrobe by any means, but for now… She could get him a new winter coat and some less patchy, raggedy clothes. She just couldn’t leave him to suffer. “I’m done, so I guess I’ll leave…” he said. He slid the mug and plate across to her then picked up his bag. “Thank you.” “You’re welcome here anytime you see this place, Kurusu-san.” She smiled at him and he left. She went back behind the counter and adjusted the control mechanism, landing them squarely back in Vale. She locked up everything tight and went up to the apartment above her own. She knocked on the door and Edelgard peeked her head out. “What’s up, Blake?” “I need to run some errands. Do you think you could take care of dinner for Weiss for me? She really won’t—and can’t—eat too much. Something like soup would be fine. Though…do you guys have groceries?” Edelgard nodded. “Yeah. Anna brought us some that’ll last until the end of the week. So I guess I’ll see you later?” Blake nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for taking care of Weiss. Just remember she won’t be able to make it up the stairs very easily without support.” “Right. Well, get going.” Blake nodded and hustled down the stairs to the garage in the back alley. She put in ‘thrift shop’ into the GPS then got over as quickly as possible. It really wasn’t that far of a drive, but it was rush hour traffic in Vale, so it took a good twenty-five minutes just to get out there. She went to the men’s section and started looking at clothes. She found some clothes she thought would be a good match for Akira’s size, though his lanky proportions was definitely a challenge. He was very lean and lanky. The biggest disappointment was the general lack of winter coats. She supposed it only made sense that they would be low in the middle of winter because everyone wanted something. All she could find were women’s puffer jackets which was unfortunate…but one did seem like it’d fit Akira. Plus, it was long and would go a decent way down his leg. His current winter coat was thin and falling apart like his pants clearly had been. It sucked she had to give him a women’s winter coat, but she really didn’t have the time to run to somewhere like Layered Luxe and pick something up. She was already losing out on money by closing the café early… She hoped he wouldn’t be too mad at her for giving him a women’s coat. Everything else had come from the men’s section and would (hopefully) fit him. She checked out and went back out to the car, going back to the café which took another 25 or so minutes. She grabbed the bags and went up to her apartment which was dark and quiet. She flicked on the lights and went over to the washer and dryer, dumping the clothes in. Better to get them washed before giving them to him… She didn’t want to give him dirty, second-hand clothes. She was exceedinglyhungry by now since she hadn’t eaten since early that morning. The clothes would take time to wash, so she started on some hamburgers for herself. Edelgard and Hubert were taking care of Weiss for dinner, so she didn’t really feel the need to worry about that. She still did need to meet up with Summer for Weiss’ service Pokémon, but for now…she focused on cooking dinner and eating. She would’ve preferred the burgers be on a grill than in a skillet, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it… After finishing cooking, she sat down with the burgers and ate gratefully. Honestly, she might be able to get lunch now… She would have to train Edelgard and Hubert in how to make drinks to her standards, though… That would take some time unfortunately. Maybe she could run somewhere and get something to eat if nothing else. She just really hated going so long between meals, but closing the café during the lunch rush was a bad idea. Then again, now she was going to be in different worlds, so there may not even bea lunch rush anymore. However, she noticed time started ticking closer and closer to seven, so she scarfed down her dinner and then headed back downstairs. This was going be an interesting meeting…