Tired souls

The afternoon sun shone bright through the library windows but still Victor could feel his concentration and eyelids drop. He'd stayed up all night and was now reaping the effects of his choices. With all the extracurriculars, he hadn't had the time to make the assignment due today beforehand and so he'd had to pull an all-nighter. And even then he’d only been able to finish it right before class started this morning. The problem was that with the lack of sleep, he now couldn't focus on the work he needed to do today. He needed some caffeine.

Leaving the library behind him, Victor went into town. He'd explored it a bit already but still wasn't very familiar with Sanctum and so he strolled until he found a place that served coffee. A bell rang when he entered. Edgar flew in behind him and landed on his shoulder. Victor looked at the menu on the wall as he walked towards the counter. "A coffee, please," he asked, trying not to fall asleep while standing. As soon as he would get his coffee, he’d collapse on one of the seats near the windows to drink it.

This wasn’t the first time Victor had stumbled into a shop looking for coffee. If he was honest, it was more of a habit than anything else. After all, his murkrow wasn’t the only one who had trouble sleeping. Victor himself often stayed up late at night, most of the time to study; sometimes, like tonight, it was because he otherwise wouldn’t be able to meet a deadline, but usually it was because he couldn’t sleep.

The positive was that from his insomnia, his love for coffee was born. Caramel, mocha, unfamiliar flavours imported from other countries,... he’d tried it all over the years. But on days like today, when he just needed something to stay awake, it didn’t matter what it tasted like, as long as he got some coffee.

Victor turned around when the person behind him suggested he’d try their signature blend. “Thanks,” he smiled at the man. With his tired brain, Victor made the quick observation that the other couldn’t be much older than him and had blond hair with a streak of red in it, before he focused his attention back on the bartender. “Do two of those,” he ordered for both of them.

“Or can I get you something else?” he asked the man behind him before the bartender could start making the drinks.

The short moment between him asking the question and the other answering gave Victor the opportunity to look at the stranger more closely. His hair was blond except for one streak of reddish orange which complemented his piercing red eyes perfectly. He was about the same height as Victor, though the other might be a few centimetres taller, definitely not more than that. And for a moment the man’s face was clouded by surprise before his bright smile returned and he accepted the offer.

Victor had never needed to be careful with money and so he hadn’t expected that the other might be shocked by the offer. His spending was the only thing his father hadn’t cared about and if he was honest, Victor had never worried or even thought about money.

Once Victor had ordered the drinks, the other stepped forward and pointed towards the desserts under the glass counter. Victor smiled when he understood what the stranger was doing. “Mmmh,” he playfully thought for a few seconds before looking the other in the eyes. “You could tell me your name,” he grinned.

Victor chuckled at the retort. “I’ll have to think of a better deal then,” he answered. While the other paid, Victor looked down at the steaming cups in front of him. He could feel his eyes trying to close themselves so they could rest, but the playful banter managed to grab his focus enough that he could force himself awake for a bit more; at least long enough for him to get some coffee in his system and for the beverage to work its magic. He’d sleep later, he tried to tell his body.

The stranger gestured towards an empty table. An invitation Victor agreed to with a smile. He took the two cups in his hands while the other picked up the muffins, after which Victor followed him to the table, sat down and handed the second cup of coffee to the stranger. Before saying anything else, the first thing Victor did was take a drink from his coffee. A satisfied smile spread across his face. The other had been right, it was a rich coffee with enough caffeine for Victor to already feel a bit more awake just from a sip.

The other had no idea how close he came with his observation. Although Victor had slept that week, he hadn’t slept much or very consistently. He’d always had a tendency to lose track of time and work well into the night only to realise he should’ve been asleep for hours. Or when that didn’t happen and he actually went to bed on time, he often spent an hour looking at the ceiling, willing his brain to finally shut down, before frustratingly jumping from under the covers to do something productive when it wouldn’t listen.

Sleeping was just not something he was good at.

“If you want to see me in bed, we can arrange that,” he jokingly said, keeping the tone of the earlier conversation before sighing and turning more serious. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway.” He already had trouble sleeping at night, sleeping during the day was completely impossible.

Victor chuckled. “Maybe that’s it,” he agreed. It was nice to joke and flirt like this with someone. The past month had been lonely and while he’d been making progress on finding friends, he still spent most of his time alone, studying. With that the conversation took a more serious tone. Victor had had trouble sleeping for years and coffee had become his go to life-saver when trying to avoid the hours when he couldn’t sleep anyway but couldn’t stay awake enough without it.

The other revealed that he also studied at Sanctum’s university. “You study business?” Victor asked. He’d had to take classes on it because his father wanted him to take over the family business. He’d never found them interesting. The wisdom the stranger shared about not learning more if you didn’t sleep might also be true, but that was something Victor, if he was honest, realised himself; he just found it impossible to implement that advice.

Victor laughed and agreed with the stranger before they changed the tone of the conversation. The other was clearly not very happy with his major. “Why do you study it then?” Life wasn’t always about following your passions. Maybe he’d been forced to do it the same way Victor had been forced to follow business classes—or most of the things he’d done in life.

The conversation turned back to him. Victor laughed. “No, definitely not,” he answered. Law really wasn’t something he was interested in. “I’m doing medicine.” It was something he truly wanted to do and he’d been lucky his father had allowed him. This was the first time he was doing something entirely on his own and for himself. Of course his father was still monitoring his grades at home, but it felt great having some distance between them. “I’m from Galar, so I came here at the start of the academic year as part of my master’s.”

So the other’s major was a means to an end, a way to be able to open his own restaurant. “Sadly it does,” Victor agreed. He didn’t have experience in running a restaurant specifically, but what he knew about running a business was that with it came a lot more responsibilities than simply having your goods and a place to sell them. It was difficult, but he imagined it was immensely rewarding if you loved doing it. “But that’s really cool. What made you want to have your own restaurant?” he asked.

Victor chuckled. “I’d prefer you not to get hurt,” He smiled before noticing the bandages on the other’s hand. “Though it seems it’s too late for that,” he said, a bit of that stern doctor’s tone coming through. Victor hated seeing others hurt—it didn’t matter whether they were a close friend or a complete stranger—, but he also didn’t want this conversation to turn too serious and sour it. He let the flirtatious tone from earlier come back in his voice. “I could always take a look if you get hurt,” he said, his eyes on the other’s hand.

Victor could understand why the other wouldn't want to work under someone. His father was already enough of a boss, it would be so much worse if he had two of those. Victor had however made the choice to go into medicine which made it likely he'd have to work for a boss. But he hoped he could work himself up quickly to leading research projects. The thing Victor couldn't relate to was how the other had learned how to cook from a young age. At home, they'd always had servants who did that for them and Victor never had to even hold a kitchen knife in his hands. "That's amazing that you want to start something up for yourself." He admired people who had something of their own like that or who had a dream to achieve something of their own. "You'll have to show me how to cook sometime. I'm truly horrible," Victor laughed. He'd tried to make some simple dishes at uni, but those tries had only resulted in food for the trash can.

Victor raised his eyebrows as he saw the other take out his phone. "I though I had to think of a ploy to get your name," he laughed before taking the phone. "Then it's only fair I get yours as well. My services for a name," he said with a grin before he put his name and phone number into the contact form.

Victor shrugged when the stranger asked him to confirm that he couldn’t cook. He’d just never had to. At home they’d had servants who’d been in charge of the kitchen and at uni he’d tried to cook, but when that had been too much of a hassle to learn it had been easier to just buy meals. A smile spread on Victor’s face when the other said he’d cook for him. “I’ll hold you to that,” he replied with a grin.

The question of how he’d have to contact the man when he didn’t actually know anything about the other was solved when the stranger asked for his phone number. Victor put his information into the phone before handing it back, giving the other the time to read it before asking his name. Which was apparently hard to pronounce. Ruìsāng, it was definitely not a name he’d heard before. “Sāng,” he mimicked the sound, looking at the other to see if he’d said it right. A small grin on his face for choosing to go with the nickname. “You’re going to have to tell me how to write that so I don’t put something entirely wrong in my phone,” he said when he noticed the notification of a message by a still unknown number—Sāng’s number.