Sugar Sweet ➳ shin soukoku

1 | 甘い

There was once upon a time when Akutagawa went to Uzumaki café to deal with paperwork. Usually, these were the things he would've handled at home, but he followed the idea that if he had time to leisure in a café, he had time to do work.

Then a beautiful young boy asked him if he could join him. Akutagawa said that the young boy could, as much as he was afraid that this boy would wreak havoc and disturb him.

It turned out; the boy was a quiet and very polite person, one that had a penchant for sweet things and sugar cubes. It may look odd from the normal eye when this boy added four sugar cubes into the coffee.

He thought he was subtle about it, but Akutagawa counted. There were at least three sugar cubes inside the silver-haired boy's coffee. And Akutagawa wasn't afraid to say he was the same.

When he finally noticed Akutagawa was observing, the young boy became bashful, cheeks slowly becoming pink.

"Ah, I'm sorry," the young boy said. "I grew up in an environment where sugar was hard to come by..."

Akutagawa was silently looking at the young boy; then unexpectedly, he opened his mouth; "From an orphanage?"

The young boy looked surprised. "How did you know?"

"You have a unique aura. The excessive focus on other people's actions, keeping a distance with the pretext that you will be alienated..." Akutagawa began, "It's a similar environment to the one I grew up. I've frequently seen people who escaped from orphanages."

"Is that so?" the young boy smiled sadly. It was the smile of someone dragging his past along with him. He then peered into his cup of coffee. "I did not dare to escape."

Oh, so Akutagawa was wrong about this one.

"For a very long time," the young boy paused for a few seconds, "even now when I understand that I can have as much sugar as I want, my body automatically..."

Silence again. Then followed by a sigh and a sad smile from the young boy. "I'm sure I'll be like this for the rest of my life."

For a while, Akutagawa observed the young boy silently. He noticed how this young boy wasn't much less like him.

Out of the blue, Akutagawa raised the cup he was holding, and said casually; "My houji tea... there are four in it."

The young boy's eyes widened. "Sugar cubes? In the tea? Four?"

"Yeah," Akutagawa sipped his drink without any expression. "It's the same as you. A remnant from when sugar was rare."

The young boy looked at Akutagawa for a moment, but he quickly couldn't hold it back, and he burst into laughter. A very light, loud sound yet somehow, knowing it came from this young boy, it felt warm and bright.

When the young boy laughed, he instantly looked even younger than what assumed age he was supposed to be. The moment he stopped, with a sincere, kind smile, the young boy asked; "Then, do you know that? The fight for pencils and notebooks."

This battle, Akutagawa knew very well.

"Without question. The ordinary person cannot understand that there was more competition for pencils and notebooks than even meat and sugar." Akutagawa said, placing his cup on the table. Sugar was a privilege back then, for pencils and notebooks to top it over showed how great of a deal it was.

"Since only when we write on paper that we become the freest people in the world. We fought for them," Akutagawa explained, "Even toddlers who couldn't write wanted them without understanding why."

The young boy was still smiling, bright as ever. Akutagawa felt it was his turn to ask questions.

"Then, you know chocolate bars?" He asked the young boy.