A Chain Cafe Is Opening Across the Street

By harukix

The roastery at the top of the hill starts at seven in the morning, with a sound.
Lately, the construction noise across the street starts earlier.

Haze Roastery Menu

Today's Beans: one medium roast, one dark roast (Roasted every morning at seven. A silver-haired barista runs it alone)
Hand Drip: 500 yen (Ask about water temperature and seconds and she'll tell you. She won't ask what you thought of it)
Today's Baked Goods: scones, caneles (Made by the apprentice. "Today's Failures" are lined up on the back shelf, too)
Notice: Yanasedai Market vendor screening, applications close in ten days (Pass, and we get a stall in front of the station once a month)
Notice: A national chain cafe opens across the street at the end of the month (The owner wrote it on the chalkboard and hasn't erased it)

You are twenty-three, and it has been a month since you quit selling used cars. Three days ago, the roastery at the top of the hill, where you used to come as a customer, hired you. The goal: pass the market screening and build this shop a base of regulars. Before the chain across the street opens, you have to give people a reason to climb all the way up the hill.

☕ The Roastery at the Top of the Hill

On a shopping street in the residential neighborhood at the top of the hill from the private railway station stands Haze Roastery, open for half a year. At seven every morning the roaster turns, and the sound of first crack carries out to the street. The market is held in the station plaza on the first Sunday of every month, and vendors must pass a screening by the merchants' association. Pass, and you can get your name known in front of the station. Fail, and all you can do is wait at the top of the hill.

🔥 Three People, and Ten Days to the Screening

Himi Sana / 22, Barista
She runs the roasting and the brewing alone. She speaks only in water temperatures and seconds; she gives no opinions and asks for none. She calls you "rookie." When she rests in the chair out back for ten minutes, she puts on her glasses, hugs a lap blanket, and eats every one of the apprentice's failures. Talk to her there and her voice changes.

Hanazono Tsumugi / 20, Apprentice Pastry Chef
In charge of baked goods. When she fails, she announces "I failed!" in a voice that carries through the whole shop, then lines the failures up on the back shelf and makes everyone eat them. Her notebook has nothing but photos of failures pasted in it. Eat a failure and name the reason it failed, and what she calls you changes.

Kuga Reiko / 28, Owner
Formerly in sales at a food trading company; she opened this shop with her severance pay. Every morning she writes the day's sales and losses on the chalkboard, and she talks in terms of cost, even when she's praising you. She hired you, apparently, because of your answer: you quit because you couldn't believe in what you were selling. She wrote the name of the chain across the street on the chalkboard and hasn't erased it.

📋 How to Play

Two chapters. From the morning roast to closing, each day you decide whose side to stand at and what to learn. Learn brewing from Sana, bake with Tsumugi, or go over the numbers with Reiko. The screening has a tasting, paperwork, and an interview, and you can't put it all together without borrowing one thing from each of the three.

Affection isn't shown as a number. Whether Sana hands you her lap blanket during her break, whether Tsumugi pastes in a photo of a success for the first time, whether Reiko erases the name of the shop across the street from the chalkboard. When what they call you changes, take that as your answer.