[i]“Not even a single misstep, no matter how minor, will be forgiven. Passable is not enough. Good is not enough. Superb is not enough. You must achieve absolute perfection. Anything less is only failure. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father.”

“Then see to it that you apply it. What you hold in your hands is our life and our death, it is our past and our future, and it is your weight to carry until you entrust it to your child.”

“Yes, father.”

“Vary well. THEN MAKE ME ANOTHER GODDAMN CUP! THIS LAST ONE TASTED LIKE LIQUID SHIT MIXED WITH PETROLEUM YOU GODDAMN WASTE OF AIR!”

The child took the pot and the kettle and hurried out of the room, narrowly avoiding the boot thrown at him.[/i]

[center][h2]Rahma Alinejad[/h2]
[h3]Shinto Town, Café Oasis[/h3][/center]

The brown-haired young man sighed as he stared at the swirling dark liquid within his cup in the privacy of his yet-to-open shop, taking a sip and setting it down before dragging a hand over his face for the upteenth time in a single hour and looking for all the world like he wanted someone to end his suffering.

Or wake up and find it all a bad dream. Sadly, he had already tried pinching, and cursed enough to make the neighbors worry when that did not pan out. His sullen gaze slipped, turning into a glare when the red markings on his right hand came into view.

Of all things, it had to happen here and now. He had thought he would have had a bigger margin but noooo, of course he had to get caught up in all this nonsense.

He sipped his coffee, this time a bit more angrily than before.

‘Oh, open a shop in Fuyuki, come for the inauguration and to train the employees for the first month or two, then you can go back to your cozy house’, they said. ‘What can go wrong?’, they said. ‘Think of it as a vacation trip from managing the main branch’, they said.

(Actually, he had been the one to say all that, rather convinced that he was the only one able to turn incompetent monkeys into acceptable baristas, but do not let that detract from his rant)

Now here he was — looking at a prospective week behind schedule and a couple of employees dismissed for it and told to take a nice holiday outside of the city at his expense for the inconveniences.

(Sent to a rather convenient seminar for the sake of efficiency, to at least get something positive out of this disastrous stay in a filthy tea-ridden country)

Oh. And the possibility of death.

He looked around, almost longingly, at the spotless establishment, the laid-out menus, the perfectly cut cakes put on display.

He sipped his coffee again. Angrily.

It was getting cold.

Japan sucked.

And it was with that startling realization that he decided to quit it with the passive-aggressive sad sack act and just be aggressive, marching down the store away from prying eyes, into the back of the shop where his office was and closing the door behind him.

Taking some chalk, pushing the desk to one side of the room and carefully rolling up and putting the rug out of the way, he got to drawing.

And, not for the first time, he cursed his luck.

A while later, done and looking over his handiwork, he lifted the hand with the markings toward the circle now present in the middle of his office, nodding to himself a few times before starting the incantation.

This was not a task he could confront alone, but thankfully this nonsense War also gave nonsense means to the “Masters”.

…

[b]“——Come forth! O’ Attendant of the Table!”[/b]

Like that, right? Well, probably not, but so long as it got results...

Light coalesced into his room along the artificial breeze, and Rahma covered his eyes and waited.

[@Senseless]