Kai has just started working as a normal employee at Imperial Coffee, except he's not normal at all: his parents own the company. The problem? He has no practical skills whatsoever. Luckily for him, Cinder, the senior employee, does.
(The cover has...
Author's Note: There is Portuguese in this fic. While Kai translates, he doesn't do a thorough job. The real English translation is at the bottom.
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Kai was good at a lot of things. He could run a lab, write an essay, solve a math problem, row a boat, read a book, and even do taxes. He could not, however, make a cup of coffee for the life of him. Not from lack of trying.
He sat a table over from Cinder, the senior employee who had been teaching him that day. "Senior" had nothing to do with age; Kai was a year older than her. Yet, for the first time in his life, he felt severely inadequate.
He bit into a scone an employee gave him earlier. He imagined it had to do with his father being the CEO. Since the moment he stepped into Imperial Coffee that morning, the other employees were distant. When Cinder first greeted him, he had to make her call him Kai: Mr. Huang he reserved for teachers and business meetings with his parents.
Still, Cinder was different from the other employees. From the hours she worked, he wondered if she went to college too, and when she first arrived she smelled like something akin to mechanic grease. He was intrigued, that was for sure, and it didn't hurt that she was attractive to boot.
"Oi, Iko. Como você tá?" he heard Cinder ask, though no one was across from her. He was confused until he noticed the laptop facing her. He could only see the Skype frame.
He didn't hear Iko's reply since Cinder was using earbuds, but now he was curious. It took him a second to recognize the language, but he thought Cinder was speaking Portuguese. He was fluent in Spanish, and he'd recently been taking Portuguese on the side for over two years. Rusty, but he could get by.
"Sim, o trabalho tá bem normal. Não tem nada muito interessante hoje."
Work wasn't interesting? Was he really that unimportant?
"Ah espera, eu esqueci. A gente tem un novo empregado. Ele também é o filho do CEO, então todo mundo tem agido bem estranho hoje."
He now appeared in the conversation, though he couldn't understand completely what she said about him. Something about being a CEO? And...did she say he was weird?
"Quero dizer, sim, mas não vai assumindo coisas. Ele é bem ruim em fazer café." She laughed and Kai's face grew warm. He was painfully aware of the irony of the situation. Yes, he was bad at making coffee. Ha. Ha.
"Trazer ele? Você tá de brincadeira?? O que eu diria? 'Minha irmã é louca por você, gostaria de falar com ela por Skype no seu primeiro dia de trabalho?'"
Cinder was...going to ask him to Skype with Iko? Well.
"Tá bom."
Kai saw Cinder get up from the corner of his eye and pretended to concentrate on taking another bite of scone.
"Hey, um, Kai."
Kai looked up and smiled. "Don't tell me lunch is already over."
"No, actually. My sister wanted to say hello. I know it's weird, but I don't want to say no."
