Five times someone from the Akademiya thought Alhaitham and Kaveh were dating

4:Acting Manager of Puspa Café, Enteka

After retiring from the Corps of Thirty, this is where I get my cup of coffee everyday.

The acting manager makes me the same coffee every day, and the storyteller tells the same story.

Perhaps the essence of life in Sumeru lies in repetitions like this.

Sighing, Enteka smooths out the paper with Izem's rough script and continues cleaning the Puspa Café signboard.

Of all of her patrons, she worries about Izem the most.

Izem had been her first customer after becoming interim manager years ago, a job that now stretches endlessly before her in a way that's more pleasant than stodgy or confining.

If anything, she worries about what will happen when the manager returns and she's suddenly out of a job.

Still broad and dressed in the uniform of the Corps of Thirty, Izem spends nearly all of his time in the café contemplating his retired existence. Enteka doesn't know why Izem is no longer in the corps' service. She assumes it has to do with the myriad scars on his body and his age.

The countless Akademiya students she serves strong black coffee to day after day seem to want nothing but more time and idolize youth and industry in the same sentences that they also use to praise their accomplished elder peers and sages. It's confusing and she wonders whether they realize their hypocrisy. By contrast, Izem seems lost and confused and slow to accept his new position despite years having passed since his dismissal.

She would offer him a job, but she doesn't need any more staff. It's too bad, because she thinks he'd be good at it. Izem's surprisingly contemplative nature — at odds with the initial assumptions she initially made about his appearance — and experience make him a good candidate.

If she ever needs someone in the future, Enteka thinks that she'll ask Izem anyway.

As she steps back to admire her handiwork, the lacquered wood frame of the signboard gleams back at her with an inviting cleanliness.

***

Enteka isn't a scholar — she never went beyond her perfunctory education at the Akademiya — but she prides herself on her memory and studiousness. It's helpful in this job, more helpful than many would assume.

Everything is patterns, she often thinks while watching her few patrons at the slowest times of the day — after the morning rush but before the sun fully sets and they begin to serve more sweet alcoholic aperitifs than coffees to bedraggled Akademiya scholars with her desserts.

As if he was summoned by her thoughts, Enteka watches as Mister Kaveh enters with his usual flourish. If he's in a good mood, he'll order an egg coffee, drink it very quickly for someone who is constantly talking about stopping and enjoying the moment from an aesthetic artistic sense, and leave within a half hour. If he's in a bad mood — after arguing with Mister Alhaitham, most likely — he'll order sticky rice whisky and spend the rest of the evening into to closing time with unshed tears in the corners of his eyes, listening to Mister Maddah's stories.

Tonight, Kaveh's expression is near murderous and he orders a whisky in a brusque tone that she knows not to take personally.

Soon, Mister Kaveh is drunk and the life of the party, inspiring others to cheer after every story that Mister Maddah tells, even though she knows that he's heard all of them many times already. Two scholars at the table closest to the bar talk loudly of how pretty Mister Kaveh is and how they wish that he would look in their direction.

Somehow he never notices or overhears these conversations.

With Mister Kaveh this drunk and falsely happy, Enteka knows that it's only a matter of time before a certain Akademiya scribe shows up to collect his roommate.