Et Itur Ad Astra

Side B: Blue Hour, Track 2

Summer 2000, August, Senior Year

The rest, as they say, was history. The four of them split up in May of 2000, having all decided to pursue their dreams. Mitsuki joined Eugene in the Dulcet Creek barista training course, and Clarie and Tsukito went to Dulcet Creek University to study maths and physics respectively.

Life as a barista was hard, surmised Mitsuki after yet another gruelling day of steaming, frothing and operating the coffee machine. She'd never been one to take part in coffee culture, but she began to realise it was very much a big deal in Dulcet Creek. People from all walks of life came and ordered all sorts of things. She liked to watch the people interact, going about their own lives while intertwining their daily routines with others. She enjoyed watching the exchanges that took place between strangers, little acts of kindness or public-mindedness. It was a small, beautiful coil of joy she held stored deep in her heart that powered her actions every day.

Surprisingly, she found she was learning more about people as a barista than as a student and a prefect. Here, she was taking the first steps of her journey towards adulthood. It was only fitting that such a job came with mandatory maturing of the mind and psyche. So she began to write poetry in her free time to record all she had learned. Not knowing how to start, she began with a relatively easy poetic form, the haiku. Her mother used to write haikus, and Mitsuki remembered the five-seven-five rule drilled in from childhood. Then she progressed to sonnets, villanelles, ballads and finally free verse. She also made time for her art as well, a hobby she had discovered in sophomore year when she'd been made a prefect. She drew customers on napkins and went home with stacks of inked napkins in her bag every day. (She did this in secret, of course, so she wouldn't be punished by the manager for stealing napkins.)

Months went by, and Mitsuki finally graduated from the barista course with Eugene, both knowing how to make a good ristretto. Of course, Eugene with all his fierce owlish focus did a much better job than Mitsuki, who was clumsy and awkward. These qualities were what made her endearing, but also what got her kicked - literally - out onto the street after her 87th dropped saucer.

She straightened and made a face at Eugene, whose leg was still outstretched. He withdrew it and cheerily waved goodbye to her, then let his face drop back into his regular deadpan expression and turned, slamming the door behind him. Well, what an undignified goodbye, Mitsuki thought sourly as she straightened her rumpled clothes. All that hard work, three whole months, for nothing.

Then she remembered that she'd forgotten her poetry book, and was just about to head back in to get it when Eugene appeared at the door again, tossed her the pen and poetry book, then slammed the door shut again. "Jerk," she muttered darkly under her breath.

So, kicked out of barista school with nowhere to go and nothing to do, she resolved to make her own way in the world. Out of sheer spite, she set up a table with an old typewriter of her mother's outside the coffee shop and took to busking there. Thankfully, Dulcet Creek was an old town with modern laws so she didn't have to go to the trouble of obtaining a busking licence. She began busking poetry, putting up a large cardboard sign with instructions.

People stopped by her booth, requesting poems for mothers, lovers, teachers and so on. She allowed them to pick from a selected range of poetic forms before flipping the five-and-a-half minute hourglass on her desk. With sand trickling steadily through the hourglass, she would type furiously and produce a poem at the end of the five minutes. Certain poetic forms like free verse, ballads and odes cost three dollars, while others like sonnets and villanelles cost five, with an extra three dollars if she were to decorate the poem with her art. She had a whale of a time typing, thinking and decorating, and though she didn't make much, she felt happy.