AN: Beta-read by
Carbohydratos,
Did I?,
Gaia,
Linedoffice,
Zephyrosis, and
Mizu.
Chapter 95: Reappearances
After one too many games of Wii bowling that winter, Homura decided we should make use of the actual bowling alley within walking distance of our apartment. So we did.
Bob's Big Bowling was a relic of another age. A well-preserved relic, perhaps, but a relic all the same. The front door let visitors into an 'arcade' consisting of two pinball machines that had been new in the '70s and a Mrs. Pacman machine, all sitting on that interminable barf-colored office carpet. The bowling portion of the bowling alley lay to the left, a journey that would take new arrivals right by the only employee in evidence: a middle-aged man reading a car magazine behind the counter. Above and behind him hung a board listing the various quantities of bowling one could buy; ball and shoe rentals were free, which was nice. To the left lay a menu for snacks, the actual items hidden behind a taped-up sign reading 'kitchen out of service' that had likely been there for some time.
Approaching the counter gave us a look at the rest of the area. There were twelve lanes to bowl, but only eight were in service. The other four had been closed for some time; like the kitchen sign, the 'Out of Order' signs had faded from age. The lanes were all electronically scored, but with what was probably the original system installed back when that technology was new—the ancient CRT televisions mounted on the ceiling looked to be displaying 256-color video.
We paid for a single game for two players, got our shoes and bowling balls, and headed down to lane 10.
"Oh, hey, Cass! Akemi!"
Only three of the functioning lanes were in use, even on a Saturday, but who should be in the lane next to ours but Lewis, Mark, Paul, and Dan, already most of the way through their game?
Compared to Paul and Lewis, Mark and Dan were older—late thirties, rather than twenties, maybe even into their forties. It was hard to tell which of them was older; Mark's face was more heavily lined, but Dan had a lot more gray in his hair. My guess was that Mark was the elder, while Dan had just gone gray early.
"Hello everyone," Homura said.
"Hey, guys," I echoed. "Who's winning?"
Three out of four people turned to glare at Lewis.
"I'm just having a lucky streak, is all," he said.
"Lucky streak?" Paul grumbled. "You're fifty points up."
"Yeah, and next week I'll come in last. You'll see."
"Is this a weekly thing?" I asked.
Mark shook his head. "It's a 'whenever our schedules line up' thing."
"Is that more or less often than once a week?"
"Much less, unfortunately."
"Too many freaking restaurants in this town, I swear," Dan grumbled as he rejoined the group. "Your turn, Mark."
"There aren't
that many, are there?" I asked as Mark walked over to retrieve his ball.
"Nah," Paul said. "They're just always busy 'cause we're so close to Apoapolis."
"Too many out-of-towners," Dan added. "This place looked completely different thirty years ago. Used to be a proper small town, not a glorified shopping center."
"Don't start with that back-in-my-day stuff," Paul grumbled. "You're not old enough for that shit. Do you even
remember thirty years ago?"
"Of course I do."
"You're what, thirty-five? Maybe forty?"
Dan scoffed. "You're off by a decade. I'm fifty-six!"
"Seriously?" Paul asked. I had to agree; in fact, I'd almost asked the same thing right along with him.
"The anger keeps him young," Lewis quipped.
Paul turned to him. "You knew he was in his fifties?"
"No, I'm just not surprised."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Dan asked, turning a baleful eye on the younger man.
"Well, I tried to picture you yelling 'Get off my lawn', and it didn't take much imagination at all!"
All three men guffawed heartily.
"Seriously, though," Paul said. "The tourists aren't that bad."
"Says you," Dan grumbled. "Some days I feel like I'm living in a shopping mall."
"And we're the food court?" Lewis asked.
"Hurray," I deadpanned.
Homura gave Dan a sympathetic look. "World keeps getting smaller, doesn't it?"
"Dunno about smaller," Dan said. "Sure is getting
something-er."
"Something-er?" Paul repeated.
"Something-er." Dan leaned around Paul to yell at Mark, "Stop staring at the pins and bowl, man!"
The man in question shot him a dirty look, then sent the ball down the lane for a split.
"This is your fault," he told Dan as he waited for his bowling ball to cycle.
"For God's sake, man. Like any of us are gonna catch Lewis at this rate."
Lewis proceeded to roll his next shot straight into the gutter, but that still wasn't enough to make the game close.
———X==X==X———
Remember my comment about learning a lot of names and birthdays? The pink-haired girl who'd been in here back in October—I hadn't committed her name to memory at the time—reappeared a week before Christmas in the presence of a middle-aged woman with equally flamboyant pink hair.
"Welcome to Home Sweet Home," I said, my smile a bit more sincere than normal. "How can I help you?"
The pair exchanged a grin.
"Birthday cake," the older pinkette said.
"Birthday cake!" the younger pinkette repeated.
"A week lead-time is fine, right?" the older added. "We'd like to pick it up on the twenty-third."
"No problem." I turned to address the younger girl. "Your birthday's two days before Christmas? My condolences."
"Thanks," she said without sarcasm. "It's probably not as bad as being two days
after Christmas, but it's still lame."
"What kind of cake do you want, sweetie?" her mother—I assume—asked.
The girl dithered for a moment, then asked, "Can you do a German chocolate cake?"
"Sure."
Her mother frowned. "Isn't Danielle allergic to coconuts?"
"I'm not inviting her!" the girl said. "She decided I wasn't cool enough and hangs out with the 'in girls' now. She shoved me last week and called me a nerd just to look cool!"
"She did?" the mother asked. "Well, I'll be telling her mother about that at the next—"
"Mom,
no!"
"Sweetie—"
"How large a cake would you like?" I interjected as though I couldn't hear their argument.
Once back on topic, their order was simple and took less than a minute to note down. I learned the older woman's name because her credit card read Amberly Hawthorne, and the daughter's name because the decoration order was 'Happy Birthday, Ashley'.
"In red!" Ashley added, grinning ear to ear at the prospect of cake.
"…in red," I repeated, noting her preference with a flourish. "While you're here, would you like a free sample of our Christmas cookies?"
The sample convinced them to buy a whole box, which only made me feel
slightly like a sleazy, up-selling saleswoman.
———X==X==X———
Our winter holidays weren't much different from the previous year's. We visited Max, Gary, and Zeke on Christmas, then spent New Year's Eve with our oddball table-waiting fraternity. Homura brought twice as many pies this time, so they lasted more than ten minutes.
There were still no leftovers.
We talked and laughed and ate, the ball dropped, and then it was January for all of a week before we were buried in snow and ice—slightly too late for a white Christmas, and all the more annoying for it. Fortunately for me (and everyone who wanted our pastries), the town kept the roads nice and clear, so we could put chains on the van's tires and carry on as normal.
The end of the winter holidays meant a sudden dearth of customers, as it had the year before. I was thus extremely pleased to see five jacket-swaddled highschoolers trudge up to the door of Home Sweet Home. All three of the kids who'd been here last time were present, as well as another girl—a brunette who had a few inches' advantage over the other girls—and a boy who was about the same height.
"—lucky she's working today," the blonde girl was telling Ashley as they entered the shop. "Hey, miss, we can still eat here, right?"
"As long as you clean up after yourselves," I replied with a sincere smile. "I appreciate the company."
"Nice," the tall girl said. "How'd you set that up?"
Ashley fielded that question. "We ducked out of the cold back in October—"
"September," the brunette who'd been here that day corrected her.
"Back in
September," Ashley amended. "There was no one in here, so I figured we might as well ask—"
"
I decided to ask," the blonde said. "You told me not to bother her."
"What
ever, Chloe. Someone asked, she said yes. Ta-da."
I gave Ashley a mental thank-you for reminding me of her name. Unfading my memory may be, but I still needed to
commit something to memory first.
"I still feel like we're intruding on her hospitality," the shorter brunette grumbled.
"She doesn't mind," Ashley insisted as she guided the rest of the group to the table. "You don't mind, right?"
"Nope!" I called. "Happy to have you!"
"See?"
"She even offered us free samples," Chloe told the new girl, "but Megan was like,
nooo, we can't take samples if we're not gonna buy anything, that's stealing."
"I do not sound like that," Megan—someone had finally said her name!—whined. "I said the samples weren't
for us." She punctuated her protest by taking a massive bite out of her sandwich.
"She's kinda right," the new girl said. "Samples are for customers. Or, like, people who are gonna be customers, hopefully."
"She offered, though," Chloe said, meaning me. I waved, but none of them were paying enough attention to notice.
"Still."
"Relax, Nat, it's not like we're gonna get in trouble for it."
"Don't call me Nat!" the new girl complained. "Natalie isn't that hard to say!"
"What's wrong with Nat?"
"Gnats are bugs!"
"Well, I'm a customer now, right?" Ashley said, raising her voice slightly to drown out the new argument. "I got my birthday cake from here."
"That was from here?" Megan asked. "That was an awesome cake."
"It was
so good!"
"Did you get to try the cookies, too?" Chloe asked.
"Christmas cookies, yeah," Ashley confirmed, "but we ate the whole box in, like, one day."
"Wow."
"Yeah. Mom said we can't get more because Dad can't control himself."
The others giggled. "That's harsh," Natalie said.
"And totally unfair, because she ate as many as we did!"
"We are
definitely trying the cookies," Chloe said. "Shush, Megan."
"I didn't say anything!" Megan said.
"Were you gonna?"
There was a pause.
"I
might not've," Megan mumbled. Chloe smugged at her.
"Don't worry, Meg," Ashley said. "We like you
because you're weird, not in spite of it!"
The boy spoke up. "Say, Megan, did you really tell your teacher you wanted to be a witch when you grew up?"
"Who told you that story?" Megan demanded. "It was Ashley, wasn't it?
Ashhhhleeeey!"
"A: you can't prove it was me," Ashley said, holding up one finger. "B: it's not slander if it's true. And C: it was a
wizard, Mike."
"Aren't wizards guys?"
"Girls can be wizards!" Megan yelled. "Rowling is just sexist!"
"You don't like
Harry Potter?" Chloe asked.
"Oh, like in
Dungeons and Dragons," Mike said.
"More like
So You Want to be a Wizard," Ashley said. "She
loves that book."
"It's a good book," Megan mumbled. "Although
Dungeons and Dragons is cool too, I guess."
Mike shrugged. "I don't play, I just know it, like, culturally."
"You don't have to be ashamed of playing
Dungeons and Dragons!"
"I'm not ashamed, I just don't play!"
"Wait, back up!" Chloe yelled. "Megan, queen of all fantasy lit, doesn't like
Harry Potter?"
Megan shook her head. "I don't care about the books, I don't like Rowling herself."
"Like, personally?" Mike asked.
"Her politics are vile and she uses her popularity as a platform to promote views that hurt people."
There was a moment's pause at that pronouncement.
"Is it okay to enjoy something if you hate the author?" Natalie asked. "I mean, in the abstract, can you enjoy something without supporting the people behind it? I don't mean, like, financially—that's part of it, obviously, but like, if you ignore that…"
"Like if you borrowed the book from the library," Chloe said.
"Yeah, exactly. Can you enjoy the work even if the author is, uh… 'bad' somehow?"
"I hope so," Ashley said.
"Why?" Natalie asked.
"Because a lot of famous people are jerks, and if I'm supposed to not like their stuff because they're jerks, there's gonna be nothing left!"
"Do you think fame makes people jerks?" Chloe asked. "Or are jerks more likely to get famous?"
"They're not
all jerks," Megan said. "I hope."
"I said 'a lot', not 'all'," Ashley said.
"Maybe fame just gives people the freedom to be jerks?" Mike suggested. "Like, once you're famous, you can get away with more shit."
"Maybe," Megan said, "but that's more for, like, 'being a dick' rather than being an antisemite or whatever."
"No, you can get away with being more racist, too. People tell you 'no' less when you're important."
"I thought it might be, you know, stress or something," Chloe said.
"Nah," Ashley said. "Then there wouldn't be
any non-jerk celebrities. Hey, are you guys done eating?"
"No, you cannot have my sandwich," Natalie said.
"I don't want your lunch, I want cookies."
"Are you going to buy one?" Megan insisted.
Ashley rubbed the back of her head with one hand. "I don't have money with me today, but maybe next week?"
"We don't
have to buy anything," Chloe said.
Mike threw his hat in with the brunettes. "It's kinda rude, though, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't say
rude," Natalie said, "but it is kinda… I dunno. It feels like we're gonna get caught, if that makes sense?"
"By who?" Ashley asked. "It's not like we're sneaking around behind her back." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at me for emphasis.
"What if we get
her in trouble, though?" Megan asked.
"If it was a problem, she wouldn't have offered."
"I guess that's true," Natalie said. "You're sure she's not expecting us to buy something afterward?"
"Ask her yourself," Chloe suggested.
"I dunno, that feels rude, too."
"Girls," Ashley said. "
Cookies." She and Chloe stood up and harried the other three kids towards the counter.
"Did you have a nice lunch?" I asked. The group nodded or murmured assent, distracted by the cookie display.
"What was the other book you mentioned?" Mike asked Megan. "The one you
did like?"
"
So You Want to Be a Wizard. It's the first of the
Young Wizards series."
"I read those when I was a kid," I said. "I don't really remember any of them except the first, though."
"It's a good book!" she repeated. "I wanted a manual of my own so badly as a kid. I'd have settled for a Hogwarts letter, even."
Doesn't that strike a chord.
"Me too," I admitted.
"And now you're working at a pastry shop," Megan muttered, then turned bright red and stammered, "Which is cool! You get paid? That's very, like, adult and stuff
kill me."
Natalie came to her rescue by clearing her throat and asking, "Is it, uh, is it okay if we, like, try some samples even if we're not going to buy anything?"
"Sure," I said, "it's no problem. These are things that didn't come out looking good enough to sell." I wasn't actually sure how many of said items were due to actual error versus Homura making sure there were enough 'defective' items to turn into samples, but the result was the same. To make my attitude perfectly clear, I picked up the tray in question and held it out to the kids.
Natalie still looked doubtful, so I added, "If no one else eats them, that just means I will."
Megan stopped hiding behind Mike long enough to take a closer look at the tray. "Oh, that's just not fair," she muttered.
One by one, the kids selected a sample—all cookie bits—then stepped back and formed a circle before all taking their bites at once.
There was a pause.
"
Oh my god this is so good!" five voices cried out in sync, which was really par for the course with Homura's baking.
Mission complete, the kids headed back to their table for the rest of the break. Even Ashley wasn't bold enough to ask for
seconds, though I'd have obliged her if she had.
"Are you going to be here tomorrow?" Megan asked me as the others gathered their things.
"Sure am."
"We'll actually buy something tomorrow," she promised. "
Right?"
"Sure, if you're paying—joke! It was a joke!" Ashley squealed as Megan unleashed her fiercest glare. "Fine, I guess this is as good a use of my allowance as any."
———X==X==X———
"The kids came back."
"The same group?"
"Yeah, plus a new member. And they actually tried the samples this time."
"That explains the mess."
Homura and I were cleaning up the shop for the evening, as usual. For obvious reasons, there were an unusual amount of crumbs around the counter.
"Think this is going to be a regular thing?" she asked.
I shrugged. "They promised to actually buy something tomorrow, but we'll see if they follow through."
"What do you think?"
"I'm optimistic?" I hedged. "Why?"
"Should I make something special?"
"Like what?"
She sent me a mischievous grin, then beckoned me back into the kitchen to show me her latest addition to the store's baking equipment. "I ordered these back in November, but they didn't get here in time for New Year's," she explained. "I'm not sure there's much market for them, even as a novelty, but I wanted to make a batch anyway. Think they'd appreciate it?"
"I know one of them would. And I'd like to try one as well."
Homura's grin widened. "I guess we'll misplace a couple."
———X==X==X———
There were even more kids the next day: a girl with black—or perhaps very dark blue—hair in a boyish cut and a boy who stuck out from the crowd like a cornstalk in a grassy field.
"Wow, I didn't know this place existed!" the new girl said as she looked around. (We'd been here for more than a year, darn it!) "How'd you hear about it?"
"We walked by," Ashley said.
"That's it?"
"Yup."
"Huh." The new girl took another look around, as though that detail had changed her read of the place. "Do they serve coffee?"
"I don't think so."
"Aw. Then why do they have a seating area?"
"Dunno," Ashley said. "No one uses it."
"Well, not that we've seen," Natalie corrected her. "How many times have you been here?"
"Uh… four?"
"Three," Chloe said, "even if you count this time."
"No, I came here for my birthday cake, remember?"
"Oh, right."
The group sat down and began unpacking their lunches.
"So, what did you guys do over the holidays?" Mike asked.
"My parents had another terrible New Year's Eve party," Megan said.
"What's so terrible about that?"
"The fact that it was my parents hosting it. What did
you do?"
"Uh, my brother came home from college for Christmas, so that was fun."
"What college?" Chloe asked.
"University of Texas. He's studying structural engineering." Mike turned to the other boy. "What about you, dude? What'd you do for Christmas?"
"Not much," the other boy said. Even sitting down, he was a couple inches taller than everyone else, and so quiet I wouldn't have been able to hear him if there were anyone else in the shop. "My parents switch holidays every year, so this year it was Christmas with my mom and New Year's with my dad."
"Are they still living right across the street from each other?"
"No, Dad moved across town back in May. And it was never 'right across the street', they were a block apart."
"That still sounds really awkward," the new girl said.
"They're still friends, they're just not in love anymore and want to see other people."
"That sounds even more awkward!"
There was a pause.
"How was your break, Kaitlyn?" Mike asked, finally naming the new girl for me. "Wait, let me guess: you played video games all day."
"You know me so well," Kaitlyn drawled.
"I helped," Natalie added. "Couch co-op for the win."
"Oh?" Ashley asked. "You didn't strike me as a gamer."
"Well, I mean, I don't own any myself, but I'll play a game if you put it in front of me."
"Especially if it's a
Star Wars game," Kaitlyn added.
"Ooh, which?" Mike asked.
"
Lego Star Wars."
"Nice."
"I finished my replay of
Massive Effects, as well," she added. "I love those games."
"Too bad the third one sucked."
"No it didn't!" Kaitlyn whined. "People only hate
ME3 because it didn't go the way
they wanted. It had the best gameplay, good writing, and it reflected your prior choices a lot more than anyone gives it credit for. People meme about 'differently colored endings' because they ignore all the ways the
sub-plots could end. Was it perfect? No! It was rushed and didn't deliver as much as the studio promised. It's still a
damned good game and I'm sick of people ragging on it for 'gamer cred'!"
Mike blinked at her. "Sorry…?"
"You're excited for the next one, then?" Natalie asked.
"Hell yes, I'm excited! A whole new galaxy! I can't wait to see what they do now that they don't have to deal with the Reaper plot."
I kept my mouth shut. Nothing I could say would spare her from the pain.
"Ooh, speaking of outer space," Megan said. "Did you hear about the UFO sighting in Moperville last year?"
"
Yes," Ashley grumbled, "we heard about the UFO sighting in Moperville last year." From her tone, they had heard about it many times.
Well,
some of them had. "UFOs?" Natalie asked. "Really?"
"Don't get her started," Chloe warned them.
Megan was undeterred. "Really! Witnesses said they circled the big tower twice before heading off into the suburbs. I think they were having trouble reading the map."
"Megan," Kaitlyn said gently, "you know UFOs aren't real… right?"
"Come on, Kate, let me have my fun."
"She wants to believe," Chloe added, which got Ashley started on loudly humming the X-Files theme. Megan pouted at the pair.
Natalie decided to change the subject. "Since we're talking about space and spaceships: which was the best
Star Trek series, Ash?"
Ashley's face lit up at the mention of her favorite subject. "Oh, that's hard," she whined—as though she didn't relish the chance to lecture everyone on
her favorite Nerd Vice. "It's definitely one of the earlier sequels. I like the Original Series, but it's good
because it's bad, if that makes sense, and
Enterprise was very… well, it tried."
A few kids chuckled at the faint praise.
"As for the
good series," she continued, "
Deep Space Nine was awesome, but it didn't have the same 'mood' as
The Next Generation. Both are good, but
Tee-En-Gee is very, like, eighties TV. Almost completely episodic, so there's not enough continuity to tell a story that needs more than an hour or two to cover.
Dee-Ess-Nine is more 'modern'—more continuity, deeper character arcs, and darker subjects—but it had to trade in some of
TNG's optimism to do that."
"So?" Kaitlyn prompted.
"So you can't really say one is better than the other. It's like trying to compare
Firefly and
Battlestar Galactica. Ah, that makes me wonder what
DS9 would have been like if it had come
after BSG, when studios trusted audiences to follow a plot throughout an entire season."
"So
TNG,
DS9, and
Voyager are just too different to say which one is best, then?"
"
TNG and
DS9, yes," Ashley agreed. "
Voyager was a dumpster fire."
"Why?"
"Because they took the plot of
Lost In Space and then
forgot about it. They couldn't decide whether they wanted to make a darker-and-edgier
Trek or a stranger-and-wackier
Trek, so they split the difference and got nonsense. The characterization was so inconsistent as to be nonexistent, the plots generally required everyone involved to be total idiots, and the 'science' was bad enough to break suspension of disbelief even for longtime
Trek fans—and let me tell you, we will put up with a
lot. Every good episode back to back would run barely two seasons, and they had
seven."
"What's wrong with Seven?" Natalie asked.
"What?" Ashley asked.
"She only exists for the sake of fanservice," Kaitlyn said.
"Which is probably why Allie doesn't mind," Chloe added.
"What?" Natalie asked. "Are you saying I'm gay?"
"No!" Chloe yelped. "And it would be fine if you were—!"
"It would be
fine," Kaitlyn emphasized with a threatening glare around the table. "Right?"
"—I was mocking
Star Wars and Slave Leia," Chloe finished.
"Oh." Natalie gave a sheepish laugh. "Okay, yeah, that outfit was definitely worse—but you really shouldn't throw stones, miss anime queen. And of course it would be fine, but it's still rude to—"
"No, no," Ashley yelled over the chaos. "I meant they had seven
seasons!
Voyager ran for seven seasons! That means that less than one in three episodes were actually good."
"You made that statistic up," Kaitlyn said.
"I'm estimating," Ashley whined. "You have about two seasons worth of good episodes out of seven total seasons, that's less than one in three."
"Where'd you get the first number?"
"Estimating!" she repeated. "The point is, the writing was bad. Look, in terms you can understand:
TNG is
Tiberium Dawn,
DS9 is
Tiberium Sun, and
Voyager is
Generals."
Kaitlyn gasped in horror.
"So what did
you do over break, Nat?" Mike asked.
"Don't call me Nat!" Natalie whined. "And it was the usual for my family: baking Christmas cookies with Mom and decorating the tree with Dad."
"Wasn't there a
Star Wars marathon on New Year's Eve?" Ashley asked.
"It was New Year's Day, but yeah. I skipped the first half—"
"What?" Kaitlyn interjected. "You passed on a
Star Wars marathon? Who are you and what have you done with Natalie?"
"Look, I love the prequels for adding so much to the universe," Natalie said, "but I also hate them as, like, movies? The only redeeming features are the memes."
"Okay, fair, the writing is kind of a mess."
"For one thing, it doesn't have a main character. The original trilogy has Luke; you start with him on Tatooine—"
"You start with R2-D2 on board the
Tantive IV," Kaitlyn said.
"You start with R2-D2
in orbit of Tatooine," Natalie insisted. "Why do you know the name of the ship?"
"
Star Wars Battlefront."
"Of course," she muttered. "Anyway, like,
New Hope had a space battle in the first thirty seconds to catch your attention, but it's only important to the plot because it gets Luke involved, and the action follows him for the entire trilogy. The prequels don't have that focus. Is it about Obi-Wan or Anakin? Padme? Heck, a 'start of darkness' with
Palpatine as the main character would have made a better trilogy—at least it would've been coherent. But, like, the character focus is far from the only problem with the prequels. There's also the midichlorians, the racist caricatures, the romance, the
dialogue…"
"What about the whole 'road to the dark side' thing for Anakin?" Mike asked. "Like… Palpatine got Anakin to kill Dooku because he was 'too dangerous' to take alive, and that was
eeevil. Then Mace Windu wants to do the exact same thing to Palpatine and
that would have been right? Come on, Lucas, at least create a consistent moral framework for your cool psychic space magic."
"No, hold on—I think that was intentional. That's why Anakin just straight-up jumps off the slippery slope: he sees the Jedi as hypocrites who are all too eager to kill the only person who's offered him any hope of saving Padme. That's why he says, 'From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!'—like, the movie doesn't do a good job of exploring his reasoning
at all, but there's some logic to it if you squint."
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes?" Kaitlyn offered.
Mike rolled his eyes. "Very funny."
"No, she has a point," Natalie said. "There's an argument to be made that Dooku wasn't too dangerous to let live, but Palpatine was. It's another line that's really cheesy because the movie forgets to put context behind it, but it
could make sense. Sorta."
"For someone who hates the prequels, you sure do defend them a lot," Kaitlyn joked.
"I'm not defending them! If anything, things like that just make it obvious how bad the movies were! Just throwing things out without context or explanation is, like,
major fail."
Chloe rolled her eyes. "God, you guys are nerds."
"Like you're not," Ashley shot back.
"At least I'm not a
Star Wars nerd. That's like the vanilla ice cream of nerd—back me up here, Megan."
"I'm pretty sure
actual science is the real 'vanilla' nerd," Megan said.
"Nah, that's, like, no flavoring at all. Like leaving ice cream 'milk' flavored."
"Would
Trek be chocolate, then?" Kaitlyn asked.
"Sure," Ashley said. "I like chocolate." She glanced at Megan and giggled. "And fantasy is vanilla with nuts!"
"Hey!" Megan squawked, sending a stern look at the other girl.
Ashley's response was to lean over to Kaitlyn and stage-whisper, "She told our fourth grade teacher she wanted to be a wizard because she thought magic was real."
"
Stop telling people that story!"
———X==X==X———
Eventually, the kids made their way over to the counter.
"Oh my god!" Chloe yelled, pointing at a tray full of cakes shaped like fish. "Is that
taiyaki?"
I did my best to keep my smile 'professionally friendly' rather than 'barely holding back laughter' as I answered, "Yes, it is."
"What's
taiyaki?" Kaitlyn asked.
Megan pulled a smart-phone out of her purse. "How do you spell it?"
"It's an anime thing," Ashley grumbled.
"Anime… pastry?" Kaitlyn seemed confused by the concept.
"You know, something that shows up a lot in anime," Ashley explained. "It's a cultural thing, like their version of funnel cakes or something."
"Do they not have funnel cakes in Japan?" Natalie asked.
"I have no idea—I meant it's, like, festival food or something."
The girls looked to Chloe for answers, but she was dead-focused on the
taiyaki and didn't register their questions.
"
Taiyaki, literally 'baked sea bream', is a Japanese fish-shaped cake," Megan read off her smartphone. "It imitates the shape of the
tai—Japanese red sea bream—which it is named after."
"But why is it shaped like a fish in the first place?" Kaitlyn asked.
"Uh, let's see…" Megan muttered as she skimmed the article. "Wikipedia says it's for 'good luck'. That doesn't really explain much, does it?" She looked up from her phone at the tray and added, "I kinda thought they'd be savory, to be honest."
"Nope," Chloe said, having finally snapped out of her daze. "They've got a sweet filling, like a jelly donut. Hey, miss, what's in these?"
"The ones on the right are custard," I told her, "and the ones on the left are authentic sweet bean paste."
"Authentic…?!" She started digging through her jacket pockets, coming up with a handful of loose coins and a crumpled dollar bill. "Ashley, I need to borrow—no, shut up, this is
important."
Ashley folded her arms, so Chloe turned to Megan, who hid her face in her hands and whispered a prayer to god, then to Kaitlyn, who stared at her in befuddlement.
"If you wanted a cookie so badly, why didn't you bring money?" Mike asked.
"I didn't know I'd want one!"
Natalie came to her rescue. "I can spot you ten if you pay me back tomorrow."
"Promise!" Chloe raced over and hugged the other girl hard enough to stagger her. "Thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you."
Ashley leaned over to Megan and whispered, "Five bucks says she doesn't even like it."
"No bet."
———X==X==X———
That evening, Homura and I used the up-to-now largely ceremonial Employee Break Room to enjoy some
taiyaki ourselves. I had custard; she had azuki bean paste.
"Did they like the
taiyaki?" she asked.
"One of them certainly did."
"The otaku?"
"Of course. And I definitely like mine."
Homura offered me her
taiyaki, and we traded to sample the other flavor.
"No offense to your culture, Homura, but I think I like the custard better."
"I think that reflects more poorly on your culture than mine."
"Touche."
We traded back.
"You know," she said, "if you want to draw in more sit-down customers, offering coffee would be a good way to do it. How do you feel about branching out a little?"
"Unenthused."
"What about tea, then?"
"Less unenthused," I admitted. "What are you thinking?"
"We put a hot water dispenser somewhere and charge people for the tea bag."
"Sounds good. Nice and simple."
The comment earned me a curious look. "What were you expecting?"
"I dunno, having to measure out loose-leaf tea or learn to make jasmine pearls or something."
"Oh, that's a good idea. We can do specialty teas, maybe even grow our own tea on the roof."
I laughed because I thought she was kidding. The next day, we were taking measurements for her new rooftop garden.
———X==X==X———
"The town won't give us the permits to put a greenhouse on the roof," Homura told me over breakfast two weeks later. "They say it'll 'disrupt the skyline' of downtown."
"Oh," I said, not terribly disappointed. "We can still sell normal tea, though."
"I'll order some bulk tea."
"Bagged?"
She paused.
"In bags," she grumbled.
———X==X==X———
