avocado toast & other stories

i.

Kai Jeon has routines.

He likes to pick his outfit the night before and spread the fabrics on his study desk. He prefers to record his daily exercise on his phone. And most of all, he spends six dollars every morning on two slices of avocado toast and a glass of almond milk at Strawberry Café.

When he thinks about it a bit further, the price amounts to a little over two thousand dollars a year, but it's alright: green avocados are his guilty pleasure. He's been a daily customer at the local breakfast shop in downtown Chicago ever since he's attended university here, and halfway through junior year, Kai knows both what he likes and dislikes.

Some call it being picky, but he calls it taste.

And right now, as he sits down in the seat right next to the back window, he types away at his laptop and hopes to finish his rhetorical analysis (it's due tomorrow); scents of lemon oats and soft cream linger around his nose bridge as overstimulated nerves begin to calm down with ease.

Damn, he thinks with a slight sigh. I'm screwed.

Perhaps he shouldn't have procrastinated right before the deadline, but alas, Kai's been having a rough week—he lost his favorite scarf, his computer crashed during an interview for the music-production internship he's definitely not getting now, and the avocado toast he's biting into has way too much pepper. Like, so much to the point where his throat constricts and he has to blink a couple of times to not burst out in a coughing, wheezing fit. And maybe he's weak and totally opposite society's definition of masculine (the poster of Chris Evans still haunts him), but he's just so fed up with everything and feels his soul literally eat itself as he rises out of his seat.

Before he fully knows it, Kai's marching to the cashier (poor, poor cashier) with said avocado toast in hand, and there's a foreign grimace gracing his cupid's bow as he sets the plate down on the marble counter.

"Hello," Peter the cashier greets pleasantly, his smile the essence of streamers and angel wings. Peter the cashier has seen Kai through the good and the bad: the breakdowns, the spilled cups of coffee in the mornings, and even the breakup he went through a few months ago (truth be told, Kai didn't even know that he and Kira were dating until she dumped him). So all in all, Peter the cashier is usually a sight for sore eyes. Peter the cashier is probably a genuinely kind human being and in no way, shape, or form should Kai even be getting his emotions out on this poor high schooler, but he's—just a trainwreck.

Gesturing to the piece of sourdough drowning in black seasoning, Kai huffs out a sigh and trains his eyes on his wasted money. "Peter," he asks quietly, cheeks puffing up like they do when he doesn't know what to do with himself. "Peter, do you see this?"

The cashier certainly does. "I—Kai, that's a shitload of pepper on your food."

"Yes." Kai blinks three times, refrains his irritation, and calmly asks Peter for the chef, who he has now labeled a Faux Chef because clearly no one in their right mind would want to kill him with this breakfast. "Can I see the person who made this?"

Peter hesitated. "Um—yeah," he babbles on, pushing a hand through his hair and offering Kai a soothing smile. "Yeah, just give me a second. I think she's in the back somewhere."

From months and months of eating at the Strawberry Café, he knows that the person who usually makes his toast is a burly man named Scott, and Scott definitely isn't a she (Kai makes a note to ask somebody their pronouns first before addressing them). At least from what he's been told.

So as he waits with something hot bubbling inside of his chest and pressing down painfully on his ribcage, he meditates on the sunlight streaming in from the windows and the flowering plants over by the wooden ledge. You're okay, he chants, fingers turning a bit sweaty. You're almost finished producing your song, and the gigantic pimple on your forehead is gone now. It's alright.