Work Text:
Yui hears the rain as soon as she wakes up and knows it's going to be a slow day at the tea shop. A light rain might draw in people looking for temporary shelter, but a heavy rain like this? No one wants to be outside in that at all.
Still though, her aunt would want Yui to open the shop anyway, even while she's traveling again. So she reluctantly climbs out of her cozy bed and starts her day.
Ren has just finished cooking breakfast when she steps into the kitchen. They murmur their usual greetings and settle down at the table to eat. The rain serves as a steady background soundtrack to their meal.
Shinji sleepily stumbles in right around the time they're just about finished.
"No breakfast for sleepyheads," Ren says as he tries to shuffle the leftover breakfast away from Shinji's reach.
Yui scolds him until he relents, and Shinji beams at her before he starts scarfing down the food.
The three of them head downstairs a few minutes later to start their usual shop opening routine. The boys flip the chairs back down from the tabletops, and Yui gets the teapots ready.
She wonders if there will be any trouble from mirror monsters or other Riders today. It would be dreary weather for a fight. But she can handle the shop alone if the boys have to leave.
She'd spend the whole time worrying about them, of course, but she'd be okay alone.
It's better when they're able to stay though.
As Yui predicted, the first hour isn't busy at all. Shinji sits in the corner with a notepad, scribbling out an article he's working on for his other job, and Ren tries to look busy by sweeping the floor.
It was clean after the first time he did it, but she supposes a second, third, and fourth sweep couldn't hurt either.
"Don't sweep me!" Shinji complains.
When Yui looks up from behind the counter, Ren is poking Shinji's chair with the broom.
"I'm just trying to remove all the trash."
Yui is about to scold Ren again for being mean, but Shinji makes such a funny-looking offended expression that Yui has to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
"I don't think we're going to have any customers for a while," Yui manages to say, interrupting before the two of them start bickering even more. "Do you want to play a game?"
Shinji's eyes light up, and even Ren manages to look slightly intrigued.
Yui digs out an old deck of playing cards that her aunt stashed away behind the counter years ago for rainy days just like this. They gather around a table, and Yui shuffles the deck a few times.
These cards are different from the ones given to Ren and Shinji by her brother. The ones illustrated with monsters to aid in their fights. This is just an ordinary deck of playing cards. Something to bring people together for fun instead of tearing them apart.
"What are we playing?" Shinji asks.
"Whatever you guys want. Spades? Rummy? Go Fish?"
"I'm sure I can beat Kido at any of them," Ren says.
"No you can't!" Shinji exclaims, and then very unsubtlely mouths "pick Go Fish" to Yui, who can't contain her laughter this time.
She deals the cards out, and the game gets underway. Despite their boasting, Yui is the one that ends up winning most of the rounds. The three of them rarely get some quality time together like this, and she relishes the opportunity. It's better than patching them up when they come home with split lips and bruised knuckles.
"I don't think I've ever actually been fishing," Yui says as they start up another round of the game. "At least, not that I remember."
"Oh, it's so fun," Shinji says.
He gets so excited that he waves his hands around and doesn't realize that everyone else got a glimpse of his cards. Yui gives Ren a look to discourage him from cheating, but he just rolls his eyes in response.
"You'd like it, Yui," Shinji continues. "It's very relaxing until you actually catch a fish, and then everyone starts going crazy with excitement as you reel it in."
"How did you ever manage to catch anything? Being loud scares the fish away," Ren says.
"I caught lots of things," Shinji replies. He begins to count off on his fingers. "Fish, crabs, jellyfish, clams, seaweed."
"Seaweed?" Ren scoffs.
"It's the easiest thing to catch," Shinji nods. "Gets tangled on the fishing hook all the time."
Yui laughs. She thinks she could listen to Shinji and Ren's silly bantering all day.
"We should all go together sometime," she suggests.
Eventually, their card game gets cut short by their first customers of the day stumbling through the entrance, dripping rainwater all over the floor. The three of them hop up and get to work.
By the afternoon, things have quieted down again, and Ren has mopped the muddy spot by the front door so many times already that Yui's beginning to worry that the tiles might start coming up too.
Behind the counter, Shinji is experimenting with the leftover tea from when they accidentally brewed a little too much for a customer earlier. Yui watches him pour in packet after packet of sugar into the cup, and wonders if he'll be able to taste any tea at all once he tries it. Ren, now sitting at the counter, keeps glancing over at Shinji as he mixes his concoction, even though he's trying very hard to pretend like he doesn't care.
Shinji lifts the cup up and sniffs it, considers it with a curious frown, and then takes a hesitant sip. There's a long moment where his face is completely blank before his whole expression twists into disgust. He doesn't spit the tea out, but it looks like a struggle not to.
"That bad, huh?"
"I think I accidentally mixed up a few sugar packets with salt packets," he admits.
Yui bursts out laughing, and Ren turns around so that no one can see him laugh too, but she knows that's what he's doing from the way his shoulders shake.
"Do you want to try it?" Shinji suggests, offering up the teacup.
"Absolutely not," she replies, once her giggling fit has subsided.
"Ren?"
"I'm not letting you poison me."
"It's an acquired taste."
"You didn't even like it yourself."
Yui leaves the two to their usual bickering for a while and wanders over towards the front window. The rain continues to be relentless, making the outside world look like a distorted, blurry version of itself. She's glad she's watching from the other side of the glass instead of being caught outside in the downpour. She'd probably end up getting washed away.
Behind her, she can hear Ren goading Shinji into trying some concoction featuring several kinds of teas mixed together. She can't imagine that'll be any better than the sugar/salt one from before. She listens to the sound of their voices melding together with the steady hum of the rain hitting the roof.
It'll be time to close up the shop soon. It had been a nice day – a good break from all the usual chaos in their lives.
Tomorrow, the sun will emerge from behind the clouds, making everything coated in leftover raindrops sparkle as they reflect its rays.