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“So, why curry?”
The question itself meant no harm, barely coming forth from Akira’s mouth in a quiet ponder. So subtle it was, in fact, that Sojiro had barely heard it through the pounding sound of the rain outside of Leblanc. The man tilted his head up from the glass he had been cleaning behind the bar, glancing over at the young man who sat behind the counter, a single elbow propped upon the fading laminate with his chin rested listlessly in his hand.
The teen’s eyes were starring towards the fragile door, unfocused and dull with silent contemplation. His lips were parted slightly and unknown to him, much paler than normal. In fact, Sojiro noticed the entirety of Akira’s skin tone was a shade lighter. The ebony night-shirt hung from the lithe, lean form of the boy and his left shoulder had been slightly exposed for a while now. Thunder boomed outside, and as the ravenette blinked his guardian saw a strand of his disheveled hair fall to cover one of his slate-grey irises.
Lost. This kid seemed so, utterly lost. It pained Sojiro to see and he had to force a deep, lengthy sigh before answering.
“You already know the answer to that, kid.” Again the older man’s hands started at the glass, shining and polishing the smooth, translucent material to a near perfect shine. The teen on the other side of the counter pursed his lips and allowed another bellow of thunder to pass before answering.
“Sorry, I was just thinking aloud.” Sojiro could feel the kid pulling further away, almost shrinking back into himself. It took a mental kick just to get him to react, setting the glass down on the counter carefully before he began to fiddle expertly with a coffee cup. They still had some perfectly good brew from the last customer of the night. It only took a few minutes before a steaming, fresh cup was slid in front of the withdrawn boy. Akira breathed shallowly before glancing towards the cup, pulled out of his stupor by the mere invitation in front of himself.
“Tell me what’s on your mind.” Which really meant to tell him anything at all, Sojiro thought, as he watched the ravenette slowly take the handle of the creamy ceramic and bring it to his lips no sooner than he had muttered a small ‘thank you’. The guardian knew his ward was especially bad at revealing what he was really thinking, always hiding behind some sort of carefully crafted façade or wall. But in the past few months, very rarely, the wall would crack and the act would fall to show the deeper, hidden part of Akira.
It was moments like these where he really got to see the teen underneath the false glasses and precise formalities.
It also was in this exact moment Akira tilted his head up from the counter and made eye contact with his caretaker, a faint glint of longing hidden in those intense ash colored eyes that only confirmed Sojiro’s suspicions.
“I was just thinking that for a place named Leblanc, we don’t serve many French dishes.” Evasion. Another trait this kid knew all too well. Whoever felt the need to teach this child such a thing was on Sojiro’s permanent shit-list.
“I like the name.” Sojiro kept his eyes on the teen in front of himself as another flash of lightning illuminated the café. He was searching for some way to get the young man to talk as his charcoal eyes kept contact with the dull slate ones before him. The pitter-patter of the downpour continued in the silence between the two, and a small breath left Akira’s lips as he brought the cup up to them once more.
“The name’s not bad…” The ravenette muttered under his breath, opting to look away from his guardian and fade back into his trance aimed at the door. Coffee somewhat failing, the older man tried a new tactic. Sojiro sighed and placed the hand towel he had been holding on the edge of the bar, placing his free hand on his hip as he angled his head to the side to stare at the teen in tired thought. He really was getting too old for this.
“Well, what would you add to the menu?” Akira stilled for a minute, muscles tightening as he slowly turned back towards the man with an air of surprise and careful suspicion. He thought for a minute, tilting his head towards the counter in his brainstorming before a small smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. The kid looked up into Sojiro’s gaze with renewed vigor and a challenging hint of playfulness.
“Ratatouille.” As the young man took another long sip of his coffee, the café owner blinked and tried to wrap his head around the word. Ratatouille? He had heard of it before but he was not familiar with the contents of it. It had an awful sounding name, and he sincerely hoped rats were not part of the dish. The man raised his brow in confusion and curiosity, locking his gaze with the grinning boy below him. The devilish smirk on his face said it all: this kid was reveling in knowing something the older man did not.
“Care to explain what that is?” A small chuckle left the ravenette’s lips and color began to return to his skin, making it more porcelain than ghostly-white. Sojiro began to relax, knowing this was heading in the right direction, and hoped that whatever the dish was wasn’t too farfetched.
“It’s a vegetable dish, usually served in the summer. Eggplant, zucchini, squash and the like. A fair bit of tomatoes as well!” Just hearing Akira talk about it as if he were goading over a test score made the caretaker feel all the more better. It sounded as if the teen had made this before, or at least had it and loved it. Another thing to add to the list of ‘known’s’ with this boy.
“Sounds simple enough, although we don’t have the eggplant or the squash…” Sojiro murmured aloud, bringing a tinge of shock to the young man’s face. His eyes opened wider and lips parted once more, only this time there was no listless attitude about it. He was focused now, completely enthralled in the conversation as his arms came to a comfortable rest on the counter, crossed over one another.
“What do you mean? You want to make it now?” A small laugh left the older man’s lips that brought a simple smile to Akira’s as he nodded his head, walking to the end of the counter and fiddling with the cash register for a moment before grabbing a one-thousand yen bill and placing it in the child’s palm. His face lit up like a light and he raised his head to Sojiro’s once more and nodded contentedly.
“Make sure to grab the freshest ones, I’ll leave the sizes to you since you seem to know what you’re doing with it. If you need anything else aside from what we have here then make sure to pick it up.” A smile finally radiated across the teen’s face and the dull grey of his eyes returned to a more smoke-like color as he stood, quickly running up the stairs and returning with a cyan hoodie pulled up over his head and his school shoes. He was still wearing his lounge-wear as he rounded the corner and within seconds had placed his hand on the handle to the front door.
“Got it, Boss.” Akira grinned over his shoulder, before disappearing out into the stormy night.
It was only about ten minutes later when the soaked, fumbling boy came crashing through the front door in a hurry, shutting it behind himself with a sigh and leaning against it, hugging a plastic bag to his chest. Jet-black curls poked out from under the hood, water dripping from the locks and onto the matted floor as dove-like eyes glanced around the café, finally settling comfortably on Sojiro’s form.
The cigarette the man had been holding was loosening from his grip, about ready to fall once the guardian finally caught his breath in an amused sigh, smiling at the crazy kid across from him as Akira began to walk towards the kitchen with a proud smirk on his face.
“Did you go swimming in that rain or what?” Sojiro asked, grabbing the hand-towel from the counter and tossing it to the teen, who caught it just as he set the bag of vegetables onto the cool surface of the stovetop.
“Would you believe me if I said it felt nice?” Akira hurriedly dried himself off, unzipping the hoodie, swapping it with the usual jade apron before laying the soaked cyan fabric on the back of the nearest booth seat to dry. He returned to the kitchen, washed his hands, and then started fishing through the contents of the plastic bag.
“Is that why you ran out of here without an umbrella?” Akira just smiled, pulling out an eggplant, a yellow squash, one red bell shaped pepper, and fresh rosemary sprigs. He set the items on the ink-black marble before continuing on.
Sojiro observed a change in the ravenette; as the young man whipped around the kitchen and rummaged through the refrigerator, taking out a zucchini that was almost exactly the same shape and size of the other two headline ingredients, his eyes narrowed on the vegetables with a faint intensity. A small fire was burning in those eyes, calculating and focused, before it faded slightly and Akira turned back to reach for three roma tomatoes, one small onion and three cloves of garlic. He grasped a cutting board and set it onto the counter, tilting his head over his shoulder and nodding for the older man to come forward.
“If you work on the vegetables; I’ll work on the sauce.” Akira pulled out a sauce pan and filled it halfway with water before setting it onto a small back burner and turning on the high heat. He grasped the tomatoes and with a sharp knife Sojiro hadn’t noticed until now, making ‘x’ shaped markings on both ends of the tomatoes. They only breached the skin layer, and he set them off to the side of the large cutting surface before he spoke again.
“Do you have a mandolin? The eggplant, zucchini, and squash have to be sliced around two or three millimeters thin.” Sojiro merely nodded as he walked over to a top cupboard and pulled out the plastic mandolin he kept on hand. He set it to the right thickness, mildly wondering what the dish was going to look like with these extremely thin slices of vegetables just as the teen placed the three tomatoes into the now-boiling water. He stirred them around with a slotted spoon for a few seconds, and just as the older man started slicing the eggplant thinly, the tomatoes were being taken out of the scalding water.
Akira placed the tomatoes into a smaller bowl and ran ice-cold water from the sink over the steaming candy-red ovals to cool them down. Sojiro continued his movements as he glanced over to see the ravenette take the square end of the knife and peel the skin off of the tomatoes. Slowly, and gently, he began to slice the tomatoes just as thinly as the other vegetables and set the slices onto a plate, making room on the board for other things. The café owner had just finished the eggplant when his ward began to dice the onion, bell pepper, and garlic cloves. With quick and practiced movements he placed his items into the now-dry saucepan.
“So, where did you learn how to make this?” The corner of Akira’s mouth rose into a small smile as he began to take the scrap pieces of the eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and squash and toss the better parts of them into the pan.
“Home.” Was the simple reply the young man gave, as he grasped the olive oil and drizzled a fair two tablespoons into the pan, adding with it a dash of salt and pepper. Steadily the pan began to sizzle, wafting the aroma of the vegetables around the kitchen. Sojiro finished slicing the remaining items and placed them onto the plate in separate piles accordingly. He watched patiently as Akira stirred the items in the pan, the vegetables wilting and becoming translucent in front of his very eyes. The caretaker’s charcoal gaze drifted away from the mixture and set onto the teen’s form.
What Sojiro saw, he didn’t think he could ever replicate again.
Akira was gazing downward at the pan, eyes lit with a lovely gentle flame as he worked. His face was relaxed and the softest smile was gracing his lips; when he inhaled it was calm and tender, wholly at ease. The child blinked once and glanced in Sojiro’s direction, lips perking up to a half-grin that absolutely melted the older man’s heart.
Sojiro had waited so long to see Akira smile like that. No undercurrent of stress or emotions. No lingering grimaces or hidden thoughts just to keep up appearances.
Akira was just happy.
It took a few more moments to realize Sojiro had stalled in his breathing, gripping his upper arms a little too tight in their fold, and as he slackened his muscles and gave way to a return grin, he muttered to himself.
“Some kid…”
“What was that?” Akira asked with a light air, eyes falling back into place on the stovetop. The mixture was nearly finished and the teen was reaching to turn off the heat, and then set the oven to the right temperature.
“Just watching you work, is all.” The ravenette stirred the nicely sautéed vegetables once more before reaching for the blender and beginning to pour the mix into it, still steaming hot. He added another table spoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt, before plucking a teaspoon amount of the rosemary sprigs and tossing them into the glass container. Quickly the mix was blended, turning into a sunny orange sauce within seconds. The smell was seeping out into the room as the young man uncovered it, rummaging through one of the lower cupboards before pulling out a round metal baking pan. Sojiro thought he might give in and try some of the wonderful smelling mix long before the dish was finished.
“Here, we need to do it like this.” Akira spread a few tablespoons of the mix around the bottom of the pan, coating it evenly and only adding enough sauce to keep the vegetables from burning, as he began to layer the slices of eggplant, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes in an even circle into the pan. The quad-colored wafer’s spiraled down to the middle once the older man began to help in the process.
“This is an awfully strange way of preparing a dish, or is this how it’s supposed to be?” The caretaker asked as he worked.
“The way we’re preparing it is called 'confit byaldi'. It’s a little more work than regular Ratatouille, but worth it in the end.” Akira paused, tilting his head to the side with a shining smile plastered on his face. He sighed happily and made eye contact with Sojiro before continuing.
“Yusuke would call it ‘visually pleasing’ and demand we not eat it so he can paint it.” Both of them laughed, knowing full well the indigo haired boy would probably do such a thing.
“You’re the expert, kid.” And with that, the layering had been done. Akira drizzled a final pour of olive oil onto the top, added a good sprinkle of the leftover rosemary leaves after that, and began to cut out a circular piece of parchment before laying it over the top of the dish. With a simple hum and a nod of his head, he placed the metal pan into the low-heat oven and set a timer for ninety minutes.
“Alright, now we just have to wait.” With that, the pair began to clean up.
Sojiro was quite surprised. He never knew Akira to be a ‘cooking’ kind of kid, he barely even saw him in the kitchen aside from helping out with the store. It weighed a bit on his mind how the teen knew to make this dish. It dawned on Sojiro that the ravenette had said he’d learned it from ‘home’.
Not once had the child ever talked about his home. Parents were never mentioned. There were never any real descriptions of his hometown. Hell, Sojiro didn’t even know if the kid had siblings; he only knew what Akira would allow to slip past his defenses. Maybe this was one of those slips. The guardian couldn’t help but feel it was about time to ask, especially since his ward had been so out of it earlier.
“You said you learned to make this from home, right?” Akira stilled behind the bar counter, setting his washcloth down on the wooden surface and pursing his lips ever so slightly. The same glass cup from earlier flickered with the lightning that still sparked outside the door window.
“Yeah, my parents used to make it.” The guarded and unnatural tone of voice was a dead giveaway to the source of the problem from earlier. Sojiro took a step towards the young man as he continued on, hoping for the teen to open up about it.
“Used to? They don’t anymore?” Akira tipped his head downwards, a gloomy air reverberating throughout the room.
“No. They don’t.” The sounds of the thunder and rain returned once more to their hearing. Akira’s eyes were downcast and fogged over with sadness.
“Why not? If it’s so special to you, and it clearly is, why don’t they make it anymore?” Akira waited a moment before turning to face the older man with a solemn expression.
“Because they don’t want anything to do with me anymore.” The off-kilter way the words left the child’s mouth only made Sojiro’s heart drop further. Shadows filled the contours of Akira’s face as he grimaced slightly, lips forming into a tight frown once more and the older man could see the teen was shaking.
“Akira, that’s not-” Loud thunder boomed in the background, seeming to shake the cafe as Akira jumped at the noise, knocking the glass from the counter and onto the floor. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the shattering crystal broke through the sound of the rain, and with it the teen’s entire composure. He gasped audibly, teeth grinding together and he kneeled down to the mess on the floor.
“Shit! I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to!” Akira in his panicked state rushed to pick up the glass and in doing so, ended up instead cutting his right index finger on the sharp corner of a shard. He winced, yanking his hand back to inspect just as Sojiro grabbed a fresh hand towel and stooped into a half-kneel, pressing the cloth into his ward’s hand with a small ‘shh’.
“Calm down Akira, its okay. It’s just a glass.” The older man tried to console, knowing now that the child was finally letting loose the lock on his emotions.
“No it’s not! It’s not okay!” The teen was shaking more violently, tears pricking the corner of his narrowed eyes as he continued on in his distress.
“Nothing’s okay! Nothing is going to be okay! Everything is screwed up because I tried to do the right thing and it backfired! My parents hate me, and they refuse to even talk to me now! I just want everything to go back to how it was. I want to go home…”Akira had long since given way to a cascade of tears, sobbing hysterically as Sojiro pulled him close into a tight hug. The child vented quietly into the arms of the older man, conforming into the warmth that is gave him as he wrapped his arms around his guardian’s torso and wept.
Sojiro was floored. He had never seen Akira cry before. He also had never heard that many words leave the ravenette’s mouth in any conversation they’d had in the past five months. It angered the man that this child’s parents would discard him in such a way, and he felt a strong need to give them a piece of his mind. To make their own son cry like this!? It was unfounded and absurd. But what more could he do in that exact moment but hold the young man and comfort him?
The rain continued on outside and soon the sobbing tamed to mere hiccups every now and again. Sojiro rubbed his hands in circles on the slender youth’s back and tried his best to calm him down. No words had to be said yet; the motions alone were enough for the attention-starved child. A few more minutes passed and Akira had quieted, cautiously pulling away in a tired and dull stupor. Sojiro thought it best to gently tilt the ravenette’s chin upwards before he spoke.
“Akira, listen to me. I’m not saying it’s going to happen soon, but everything will be okay. You’ll make it through this. You’ve got people to rely on, and if not your parents then there’s always Futaba and I, and your friends. We’re your family too, kiddo.” Akira sharply inhaled--eyes half-lidded with emotion and desire. He closed his eyes for a second and breathed deeply, in and out, slow and calming. He nodded his head and rested it back against Sojiro’s chest.
“If they know what’s good for them, then your parents will come around eventually.”Sojiro added with a gentle sigh.
“And if they don’t?” The cautious, almost pleading way that Akira spoke only fueled the café owner’s anger.
“Then they don’t deserve to be your parents.” A second passed before Akira chuckled into the older man’s chest, smiling brightly as he basked in the familiar and needed hold. Eventually he nodded his head again, pulling away only enough to nod his head once more.
“Okay. Okay.”The teen spoke, more to himself than Sojiro as the guardian stood and brought the child with him. He brought his ward to the nearest booth seat and sat him down; bringing the first aid kit he kept behind the counter to patch up the closing wound on the ravenette’s finger. Time passed in relative silence as they both recovered from the intense release. Soon after Akira’s finger was cleaned and bandaged, Sojiro swept up the broken glass on the floor, insisting that the child rest as a cold glass of water was slid in front of him to keep him occupied during the process.
A fair chunk of time had passed and only mere seconds were left ticking away on the timer. The bell-like chime bounced off of the walls of the kitchen and Sojiro carefully pulled the wonderful, aromatic vegetables from the oven and set the dish onto the stove to rest with the parchment still attached.
Ten or so minutes passed in anxious anticipation. Akira stood from his now empty glass of water and walked into the kitchen calmly, a small smile on his face as he pulled back the parchment to see the perfectly roasted Ratatouille. He hummed with delight and grabbed three bowls from the cupboard, setting one aside for Futaba since Sojiro was sure to bring her portion of the meal home to her, knowing she would not walk to the café for dinner in the pouring rain.
Akira carefully scooped a fair amount into the first bowl, using just a little leftover sauce for garnish before preparing his own bowl. Sojiro sat on the other side of the counter, amused by the interesting turn of events and thought about how the young man was a natural at this. He wouldn’t be surprised to see him on the other side of his own café one day. The youth brought both of their portions over to the bar and carefully placed one bowl in front of his caretaker. A rich, slightly spicy aroma wafted into Sojiro’s nose and he couldn’t help the simple hum that left his lips. It only took a few seconds before they both dug into the food with barely restrained hunger.
And just like it smelled, the dish was great. Subtle flavors of the onion and rosemary, mixing with the garlic and the pepper on the roasted gourds made the vegetables melt inside of their mouths. Akira grinned wide as Sojiro turned to him with a small flush and a muttered ‘wow’.
“Like it?” The smug voice that goaded in his successes caused Sojiro to wonder whether or not to tease the boy.
“’Like’ doesn’t quite cover it, kid. This is amazing.” Akira himself flushed a deep scarlet for a second, accepting the praise without any formalities or subtle alarm. They both took another bite before speaking again.
“So, is it good enough to put on the menu, Boss?” The chuckle that filled the air was husky and welcome.
“It’s good, but until you have a place of your own; it’s just coffee and curry here kid. Although, I wouldn’t mind if you made this again sometime soon. I might actually have to bribe you into it.” The laugh that escaped the teen’s mouth was truly genuine and it warmed Sojiro’s heart to hear.
No longer was he falling into the woes of his mind. Right here, right now, Akira was happy.
And that was enough for Sojiro.
“I’ll hold you to it then.” And with that, they finished their meal in long overdue kindred bonding.