The Cop Next Door

Morning Coffee

4:30 am.

4 damn 30 freaking am. When the alarm clock went off.

It was playing the Super Mario Starman song that he thought sounded catchy last night while setting it up. Now it seemed like pure regret.

Today was the early shift...The code red shift. The death shift. The shitty shift.

...Sugawara hated this shift.

He absolutely loved where he worked, no doubt about that. Looking after and playing with toddlers the entire day and getting paid for it was his dream job. It's just that horrible, dreaded early shift...Working at the same place for 3 years and no worker has ever been happy about getting that shift.

The daycare in which he worked in was a bit different from the other daycares, and bigger, and more expensive.

Usually the others were open from 7am to 7pm. His daycare? Playhouse Gardens? 6am to 8pm. And it was really huge. Countless children from babies to 5 year olds, divided into various playgroups and watched over by the groups of staff. The children's parents were mostly hardworking, luxurious money machines who needed to drop their kids off early and could only pick them up when it got pretty dark, so the work times at the daycare got longer. The workers shifts were never set. Every day was a different shift for every person.

And Suga got the early shift: 6am to 6pm.

It was difficult for him to get out of bed and turn that alarm off but he managed. He was moody, mumbling how much he hated getting up so early. That this shift should shrivel up and die. Not an unusual self-conversation during days like this.

He needed his morning coffee..

After getting dressed, he walked over to his kitchen and towards the cabinets, opening them up only to find..

an empty jar with no more coffee powder.

....

....

"Ok I'm sick today." He mumbled. He forgot to buy more coffee. He never did his job without any morning coffee. Ever. And he surely wasn't going to do this shift so early in the morning without his coffee.

But calling in sick would make alot of problems with the other workers. What about the children? The playgroups need at least 3 staff members to take care of them. His playgroup, the Crows, were 3 altogether. If he didn't go to work, then it would be understaffed and the poor kids would have to be divided between the other playgroups with kids they didn't know well.

That would be a jerk move.

And the kids loved him. They would be so sad if Suga wasn't there.

...Already 5:30...What now..?

No. I'm going without coffee. I can manage. Can I?

He decided to risk it.

Taking the first step outside.

Was.

Hell.

It was dark and cold and almost everyone on the sidewalks looked pissed. Happy vibes were shot dead. It was foggy. It felt like walking in a zombie movie.