i'm going to be basic as hell but. mdzs cafe au. cafe au's just get to me.
@borospaladin: Idk what that show is that you've been talking about so much lately but i love the character interactions how about a college au with some of them also working at a coffeeshop cuz i like pairing those two concepts?
(Caveat that I have never worked in a café, so it is possible I am getting details wrong.)
1. Jin Guangshan owns the café, and Jin Guangyao manages it, working around his class schedule. (Haha, ““around”“ his class schedule. This man is getting no sleep.) Jin Guangyao is basically doing all the logistics, and is constantly being made to have the awkward conversations and be the bad guy/cop who has to deal with things like “No, Wei Wuxian, you do need to show up on time, in uniform, and definitely not wearing a labcoat with maybe hazardous chemicals on it,” “No, Lan Wangji, you need to say words to customers.”
2. Why is Lan Wangji working here anyway. His uncle is paying for his classes and accomodation and other expenses. Is he here to... build character??? He is not the main reason Jin Guangyao is going prematurely grey, but gods, why is he here??? (I’m not sure what Lan Wangji is studying. Music? History? Some sort of job qualification?).
3. Wen Ning is studying biology, with the general life ambition of ?lab-tech?. (He wanted to be a doctor when he was younger, but he has seen his sister go through a medical degree and he is... not doing that.) At the cafe, he appears to be very shy and accomodating and has the spine of a wet noodle around customers, and this is sort of true-- but no one has yet to work out who sent the warning that made the food safety inspectors show up and caused chaos for a month, and if Wen Ning has his way no one ever will. (It was bad, okay. Someone had to say something.)
4. ...Wen Ning is eventually found out, and plausibly deniably fired. Wei Wuxian is fired for going “you can’t fire me, I quit!” about this. (Jin Guangyao breathes a sigh of relief that he never has to hassle him about being late, or bringing clothes covered in actetylated ferrocene in here again.) They work at the food co-op, which is somewhere between a combined café-grocery store and a liminal space. It suits them better.
5. A short list of people who are getting Business degrees because their family wants them too:
A short list of people who actually want to do business degrees:
A short list of people in an elaborate web of deception to convince their families they are doing business degrees, when they are actually studying fine arts:
6. Wei Wuxian never really listened when he was told he needed to pick his classes and “plan” to have “a major” and take “the right amount of classes”, and chose his classes to maximise field trips, the chance to play with fun toys use scientific equipment, and lab time, in that order. In third year, some Creative Accounting is required to get him to graduate, but hey, if you ever needed someone to do GIS of the structural geology of corals, somehow he is your guy???
7. The café is brought down by a rapid fire combination of sexual harassment, underpayment and safety scandals. (Wen Ning is at the co-op. He plans to not being involved. He is dragged in anyway.) Two weeks later, it has a large printed sign reading ‘Under New Ownership’. The rumour mill is abuzz. Nie Huaisang owns it now? For some reason? That art student, who hangs around doing life sketches in the lobby of the business school in case his brother shows up and wonders where he is? That guy? No one knows how he acquired the cafe, but it’s his now.
...the coffee’s better than it was before, at least.
