[APH] The Six Degrees of Separation (Prologue)
Title: The Six Degrees of Separation
Category: Axis Powers Hetalia / Hetalia World Series
Characters: Greece, Egypt, Japan, Turkey, France, England, America, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Sealand, North and South Italy, Russia, Germany, Prussia, Spain, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, China, South Korea
Pairings: France/England, Spain/South Italy, Germany/North Italy, Lithuania/Poland, Turkey/Japan, Finland/Sweden
Genre/Rating/Warnings: friendship, romance, drama, family/PG/AU, human names, shifting POVs, language shifts (which I really hope people won’t get confused by)
Summary/Excerpt: The Six Degrees of Separation is the idea that everyone in this world is connected by at most six people. It’s an empowering, intimidating thought to know that the world can be shrunk within just one city and that lives begin to affect one another as people converge and intersect. Our story begins with a pair of brothers who manage a fruit shake stand in Dotombori, Osaka and bear witness to different fates being drawn together from all over the globe.
Prologue | 1st° Part 1 | 1st° Part 2 | 2nd° Part 1 | 2nd° Part 2 | 2nd° Part 3
3rd° | 4th° | 5th° | 6th° | Epilogue
A/N: Written for the aph_minibang My first ridiculously long fic in a while. I do hope you guys enjoy it!
Prologue
♠ an excess of fruit and insomnia
My hands smell like watermelons.
The fruit is in season once more and it’s become the most ordered item on our menu. We take great care to remove the seeds from the fruit. No one enjoys sipping bits of crushed watermelon seed in their fruit shake. It’s not a particularly hard task, just a long a tedious one considering how many watermelons we have to break open, shell and slice to last one day’s supply. The watermelon juice often bleeds through our plastic gloves and stains our fingers red.
My brother Hassan and I own a fruit shake stand along Dotombori in southern Osaka. We lack the funds to turn it into an actual walk-in type store with two floors, so the upper floor serves as our humble home. Our income minus tax is barely enough to sustain the rent, water, electricity, supplies, maintenance repairs plus our own daily needs but we manage. Due to the convenience of our home-and-business, we stretch our working hours as best we’re allowed to cater to more customers.
Every five in the morning, Hassan wakes up, takes a quick shower in our bathroom and dons our ‘uniform’ before taking out the trash we’ve amassed the day before. Our supplier of fresh fruits arrives at five-thirty. Hassan makes an inventory of our stock and finishes at around six. By then, I would have woken up, bathed and dressed. I join my brother downstairs for breakfast, usually cup noodles or some other easy-to-prepare meal from the nearest AM/PM, and a cup of brewed coffee. There are days we forgo breakfast, but never the coffee. It’s one of our small links to home, and no one in Osaka can brew a good cup of Greek coffee.
After breakfast, I prepare our menu-fruits we have to wash, peel and slice, watermelons included, rice crispies that need to be toasted, gelatin that had to be cut in colorful cubes, pearls that finished boiling yesterday and whatever else-while Hassan washes the blenders, mops the floor, wipes the counter and sink, prepares the straws and cups and refills our large cooler by the cold storage with crushed ice. At seven, I’d plug in our neon and open the stand. ‘Fruit Blends’ in cheery green characters would illuminate a few paces of empty street in front of the shop. We wait and watch, anticipating the usual morning rush.
It’s very interesting to watch people who pass by our stand every day. Despite the routineness of our schedule and the seemingly dull work, Hassan and I never get tired of watching the endless tide of people rushing like schools of fish to and from their destinations.
Who’d want cold fruit shakes in the morning? you may ask. Various groups of people. First would be salary men who did overtime the night before and were just returning to their homes early in the morning. They usually ordered something sweet with milk like strawberries or bananas to keep them awake for the commute home. The second group would be the ones rushing to work. They order those energy boosters we have with cucumber and citrus or kiwi. The third group would be the elderly having finished with their morning jog or a group exercise at a nearby park. They order the ones with pearls because for some reason, they like chewy stuff. We’d then have a steady flow of customers throughout the entire morning-fellow shop owners who are opening up their stores, students, tourists, housewives back from their daily shopping. Dotombori is never without people.
I man the counter and the cashier. Our customers choose from a menu overhead, much like a fastfood restaurant, and pay as they order. Behind me, Hassan works the blenders and mixes the drinks. He seldom talks but he works fast. My brother can make six orders in the span of five minutes. It’s fascinating to see him, like his arms are two separate entities.
Our store has its peak hours and dead hours. The peaks are usually lunch and after office hours. Dead hours are in between. We pass them by, unsurprisingly, watching the people walking by. After office hours is our busiest time of any day. Students come home from school ordering berries with cream, jelly and pearls. A lot of ladies in their mid-twenties order shakes with whey protein or wheatgrass. Tourists too line up for a cold drink after a long day of sightseeing. Dotombori and the neighboring shopping streets are packed with people like sardines in an endlessly long can.
The crowd thins out at around nine in the evening. The people who pass by then are salary men who’ve just finished dinner or came from a drinking party. We’d also take order from shop keepers who have closed their stores for the day. Around ten, we’d only get one or two orders from people craving a fruit shake at such late hour. Oftentimes, there aren’t any people on the street anymore and we’d idly sit around till closing time at eleven.
My brother and I would share a simple dinner, lock up and take a walk around the streets while having a light.
Hassan has trouble sleeping at night so I join him until he eventually does feel sleepy. On nights when it’s too cold to walk out, we’d simply sit in front of the shop and talk about many things ranging from the customers we had, the people we see passing by every day, the bills that needed paying, cheese pies and dolmades our grandmother used to make back in Santorini, the composition of the stars, reincarnation, the weather, folklore from various countries to the stray cats that picked at garbage dumped on a forgotten curb.
There are nights when Hassan doesn’t sleep at all. I always sleep first so when I bid him goodnight and he doesn’t stand or he nods instead and lights another cigarette, I know he’s going to stay and watch the sun rise.
Watch…is what our humble fruit shake stand in Dotombori seemingly does. Like how different gazes meet at a clock on the high wall of a restaurant during lunch hour, we are a point on the street where people and lives intersect and converge, where small worlds collide inside a big one and it’s an regular, fantastic phenomenon.
We see familiar faces from day to day. They have acquaintances with new faces who have acquaintances with old faces. It’s a chain of people who know each other who know each other who know each other, as if some higher power draws fates closer and closer together with long, red strings.
This is why my brother and I never tire of our job. Our job, as the owners of this fruit stand in Dotombori, is to see if the lives that have been drawn together make a difference to each other. Hassan probably knows this very well. He is quiet and observant, like closed shops, black windows and the dim lights of the roof overhead, like a diligent watchman awake twenty-four seven.
to the First Degree Part 1
Category: Axis Powers Hetalia / Hetalia World Series
Characters: Greece, Egypt, Japan, Turkey, France, England, America, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Sealand, North and South Italy, Russia, Germany, Prussia, Spain, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, China, South Korea
Pairings: France/England, Spain/South Italy, Germany/North Italy, Lithuania/Poland, Turkey/Japan, Finland/Sweden
Genre/Rating/Warnings: friendship, romance, drama, family/PG/AU, human names, shifting POVs, language shifts (which I really hope people won’t get confused by)
Summary/Excerpt: The Six Degrees of Separation is the idea that everyone in this world is connected by at most six people. It’s an empowering, intimidating thought to know that the world can be shrunk within just one city and that lives begin to affect one another as people converge and intersect. Our story begins with a pair of brothers who manage a fruit shake stand in Dotombori, Osaka and bear witness to different fates being drawn together from all over the globe.
Prologue | 1st° Part 1 | 1st° Part 2 | 2nd° Part 1 | 2nd° Part 2 | 2nd° Part 3
3rd° | 4th° | 5th° | 6th° | Epilogue
A/N: Written for the aph_minibang My first ridiculously long fic in a while. I do hope you guys enjoy it!
Prologue
♠ an excess of fruit and insomnia
My hands smell like watermelons.
The fruit is in season once more and it’s become the most ordered item on our menu. We take great care to remove the seeds from the fruit. No one enjoys sipping bits of crushed watermelon seed in their fruit shake. It’s not a particularly hard task, just a long a tedious one considering how many watermelons we have to break open, shell and slice to last one day’s supply. The watermelon juice often bleeds through our plastic gloves and stains our fingers red.
My brother Hassan and I own a fruit shake stand along Dotombori in southern Osaka. We lack the funds to turn it into an actual walk-in type store with two floors, so the upper floor serves as our humble home. Our income minus tax is barely enough to sustain the rent, water, electricity, supplies, maintenance repairs plus our own daily needs but we manage. Due to the convenience of our home-and-business, we stretch our working hours as best we’re allowed to cater to more customers.
Every five in the morning, Hassan wakes up, takes a quick shower in our bathroom and dons our ‘uniform’ before taking out the trash we’ve amassed the day before. Our supplier of fresh fruits arrives at five-thirty. Hassan makes an inventory of our stock and finishes at around six. By then, I would have woken up, bathed and dressed. I join my brother downstairs for breakfast, usually cup noodles or some other easy-to-prepare meal from the nearest AM/PM, and a cup of brewed coffee. There are days we forgo breakfast, but never the coffee. It’s one of our small links to home, and no one in Osaka can brew a good cup of Greek coffee.
After breakfast, I prepare our menu-fruits we have to wash, peel and slice, watermelons included, rice crispies that need to be toasted, gelatin that had to be cut in colorful cubes, pearls that finished boiling yesterday and whatever else-while Hassan washes the blenders, mops the floor, wipes the counter and sink, prepares the straws and cups and refills our large cooler by the cold storage with crushed ice. At seven, I’d plug in our neon and open the stand. ‘Fruit Blends’ in cheery green characters would illuminate a few paces of empty street in front of the shop. We wait and watch, anticipating the usual morning rush.
It’s very interesting to watch people who pass by our stand every day. Despite the routineness of our schedule and the seemingly dull work, Hassan and I never get tired of watching the endless tide of people rushing like schools of fish to and from their destinations.
Who’d want cold fruit shakes in the morning? you may ask. Various groups of people. First would be salary men who did overtime the night before and were just returning to their homes early in the morning. They usually ordered something sweet with milk like strawberries or bananas to keep them awake for the commute home. The second group would be the ones rushing to work. They order those energy boosters we have with cucumber and citrus or kiwi. The third group would be the elderly having finished with their morning jog or a group exercise at a nearby park. They order the ones with pearls because for some reason, they like chewy stuff. We’d then have a steady flow of customers throughout the entire morning-fellow shop owners who are opening up their stores, students, tourists, housewives back from their daily shopping. Dotombori is never without people.
I man the counter and the cashier. Our customers choose from a menu overhead, much like a fastfood restaurant, and pay as they order. Behind me, Hassan works the blenders and mixes the drinks. He seldom talks but he works fast. My brother can make six orders in the span of five minutes. It’s fascinating to see him, like his arms are two separate entities.
Our store has its peak hours and dead hours. The peaks are usually lunch and after office hours. Dead hours are in between. We pass them by, unsurprisingly, watching the people walking by. After office hours is our busiest time of any day. Students come home from school ordering berries with cream, jelly and pearls. A lot of ladies in their mid-twenties order shakes with whey protein or wheatgrass. Tourists too line up for a cold drink after a long day of sightseeing. Dotombori and the neighboring shopping streets are packed with people like sardines in an endlessly long can.
The crowd thins out at around nine in the evening. The people who pass by then are salary men who’ve just finished dinner or came from a drinking party. We’d also take order from shop keepers who have closed their stores for the day. Around ten, we’d only get one or two orders from people craving a fruit shake at such late hour. Oftentimes, there aren’t any people on the street anymore and we’d idly sit around till closing time at eleven.
My brother and I would share a simple dinner, lock up and take a walk around the streets while having a light.
Hassan has trouble sleeping at night so I join him until he eventually does feel sleepy. On nights when it’s too cold to walk out, we’d simply sit in front of the shop and talk about many things ranging from the customers we had, the people we see passing by every day, the bills that needed paying, cheese pies and dolmades our grandmother used to make back in Santorini, the composition of the stars, reincarnation, the weather, folklore from various countries to the stray cats that picked at garbage dumped on a forgotten curb.
There are nights when Hassan doesn’t sleep at all. I always sleep first so when I bid him goodnight and he doesn’t stand or he nods instead and lights another cigarette, I know he’s going to stay and watch the sun rise.
Watch…is what our humble fruit shake stand in Dotombori seemingly does. Like how different gazes meet at a clock on the high wall of a restaurant during lunch hour, we are a point on the street where people and lives intersect and converge, where small worlds collide inside a big one and it’s an regular, fantastic phenomenon.
We see familiar faces from day to day. They have acquaintances with new faces who have acquaintances with old faces. It’s a chain of people who know each other who know each other who know each other, as if some higher power draws fates closer and closer together with long, red strings.
This is why my brother and I never tire of our job. Our job, as the owners of this fruit stand in Dotombori, is to see if the lives that have been drawn together make a difference to each other. Hassan probably knows this very well. He is quiet and observant, like closed shops, black windows and the dim lights of the roof overhead, like a diligent watchman awake twenty-four seven.
to the First Degree Part 1