Day twelve of the Coup D'é-Tea

The battlefield of the food court was supposed to be littered with their citizens—customers—clutching cups from their chosen establishment. Within the stores, the trenches behind the counters were supposed to be in constant chaos with soldiers—workers—sprinting between their assigned stations, arming themselves for an attack. Screams of orders ready for pickup were supposed to echo in the air, the voices lined with pleas for mercy. The fight for supremacy was never supposed to be fun.

And it wasn't—right? There was no way that being surrounded by a cacophony of cranky chatter while roasting in residual steam could ever be fun. But for some reason, as Cora rushed back and forth between the blenders and espresso machines, she found herself invigorated by an energy that couldn't be attributed to just caffeine.

As she steamed milk, she peered over the espresso machine and through the Cool Beans line. Across the food court, the blue-backpack-wearing customer in front of Fruitastic hadn't moved much from where she last saw them, and while the parent with baby triplets at Cool Beans had moved further, it wasn't by much. The game—no, the battle—was still too close to call.

Cora glanced towards Fruitastic's blenders and tried to see through the crowd. After a few seconds, Farron's tiny figure shifted into an opening as she handed off drinks to an awaiting customer. Her expression was as murderous as ever, and she didn't even appear to say the customer's name, but once she turned to Cool Beans and met Cora's gaze, she smirked.

The line for Fruitastic leapt forward, but Cora merely returned Farron's smug expression with one of her own. It wouldn't be fun without the challenge.

Again, not that the work was fun. It just wasn't painful, that's all.

As she pulled two shots directly into a cup, already holding a splash of hot milk, Cora dashed for the blenders. She had the blended drink poured and covered by the time the espresso was done, and after a minute to top it off with milk and a lid of its own, she had another order ready to be served.

"Order for Katie!" Cora called out, already making eye contact with the customer halfway through her sentence.

Before Cora even finished wishing Katie a nice day, another customer stepped in.

"Excuse me," they snapped, tapping the bottom of the half-and-half carafe against the handoff counter. "This is completely empty."

From the backroom, Darlene spun towards Cora with a firm stare. Cora tried to smile wide, only to realize she was already doing so. Any wider and her face would probably split in half, held together by a hinge of quality Cool Beans customer service.

"So sorry about that!" Cora exclaimed with more enthusiasm than she expected. "I'll get that for you right now."

As she poured the creamer into the dispenser, Cora heard a scoff from the customer. It took her a moment to notice she had been bouncing and swaying in place. A beat later, she realized it was to the rhythm of Fruitastic's jingle echoing throughout the food court. She had to hand it to their marketing team, they knew how to make a catchy battle cry.

After returning the carafe to the customer with a sheepish grin and another apology, to which the customer replied with another scoff, Cora jumped back into her routine. Across the way, the blue backpack had moved up a surprising amount in the last minute, a fact Farron also noticed judging by her smug grin at Cora. In response, Cora narrowed her eyes, but she accepted the challenge with a smile of her own.

It might have been a battle against the orange, but Cora supposed she could have a little fun with it too.

***

Once again, the food court was packed during her lunch break, and Cora was accepting her fate of spending another meal outside. But in those instances, the only winners of the day were the flies that swarmed her food whenever she let her guard down. Just the thought of it made her want to wait a few more minutes on the off chance that the crowds of customers would do a reverse flash mob and all leave at once, dancing along the way. Unfortunately, the only one dancing was Angie, and she and the giant TV screen she was on weren't going anywhere.

Just as Cora decided to surrender, one group of diners stood and began to leave their table, taking a large bundle of balloons with them. Sitting behind the helium-filled latex was Farron, scrolling on her phone with one hand while her other held a pair of chopsticks, ready to dive back into her instant noodles. The other seats at her table were empty.

Cora knew she could claim the newly opened table. But if paying patrons were searching for a seat, and they saw Cora taking up an entire table with her Cool Beans uniform and homemade lunch, it would make the company look bad. Sitting outside surrounded by flies wouldn't leave a good impression either, and customers might think she was unhygienic. She knew what she had to do, even if she wasn't happy about it. Besides, if she was fine sitting at the table adjacent to Farron, what difference would a few more feet make?

As Cora approached her target, she wondered what Farron's reaction would be to Cora's decision. The thought of catching the woman off guard made Cora pick up her pace slightly—until she faltered at the prospect that Farron could be annoyed. If Cora had been sitting by herself and a near stranger invited themselves to join her, she would hate it.

Before Cora could rethink her strategy, Farron's gaze lifted from her phone and landed directly on Cora. For a second, the woman stared at her with the same straight face she had been giving her phone. Even her eyes shifted up and down slightly, as if Cora was some boring newsfeed she was scrolling through. Cora frowned. She was so much more interesting to look at than some fake social media site. She was even ad-free.

Then, Farron smirked, and Cora wondered why she had even worried about making the woman mad. Clearly, someone needed to put her in her place.

With renewed vigor, Cora continued on her mission, marching up to the table and letting her glass lunch container clatter against the table top. The noise was a little louder than she intended, but she kept her firm gaze on Farron and simply hoped the dish didn't break—she didn't have many to spare.

Farron glanced down at the container before returning Cora's stare. "Another salad sandwich today, coffee cake?"

"Yes," Cora snapped. "Tuna salad."

When Farron's smirk widened, Cora realized how ridiculous she had sounded. Who was pathetic enough to act triumphant about a tuna salad sandwich?

"Better eat quick then," Farron said, pointing her phone at the seat across from her—or at Cora's pitiful lunch. "Your tuna salad isn't going to eat itself."

Cora was briefly tempted to say, "You're not going to eat yourself," realized how strange it sounded, then sat down without another word. Thankfully, Farron didn't gloat over her minor victory, and instead set her phone down to pick up her cup of noodles.

"So, what else is in your culinary repertoire, coffee cake?" she asked as she picked through the cup with her chopsticks, the dragon on her arm shifting with each of her movements. "Peanut butter and jelly? Peanut butter and peanut butter?"

"Hilarious," Cora muttered, though she had to admit those sounded like good options. It had been a while since she saw peanut butter on sale, though. "And what about you? There are only so many flavors of instant noodles."

"Nobody said you had to stick to using what's in the cup. Keep an open mind. They don't tell you beans to do stuff like that over there?"

Cora scoffed as she picked up her sandwich. "More like the complete opposite."

She hadn't realized what she had said until Farron's eyebrows rose.

"Oh, so things aren't that cool over at Cool Beans, hm?" Farron leaned a little over the table. "Tell me, what's the hot gossip? Or would you prefer to call it 'spilling the beans'?"

While Cora had barely managed to keep herself from moving away when Farron had neared, it was a close call, and she definitely couldn't make herself meet Farron's fierce eyes. As Farron waited patiently for an answer, all Cora could hear was the remnants of the woman's husky whispers lingering in the silence between them, drowning out the boisterous crowd around them.

So Cora panicked, taking the largest bite of her sandwich she could muster.

She wasn't sure what was worse: Farron's low whispers, Cora's embarrassing reaction, or Farron's chuckles that followed.

"Alright, coffee cake, I get it," Farron said as she leaned back into her own territory. "You can keep your bean secrets to yourself. No need to choke yourself over it. Unless...you're into that?"

Cora was having no trouble with her food until Farron said that. Luckily, she managed to clamp a hand over her mouth just before she coughed, saving herself from the embarrassment of expelling her tuna mulch over the white table.

"Excuse me?" Cora hissed once she managed to avoid asphyxiation, no thanks to Farron's soft chuckles—her low, raspy chuckles. "I told you to keep it PG. Are you trying to kill me? Or worse—get me fired?"

"Of course not. That wouldn't be any fun. I just like seeing what it takes to turn a cool bean into a jumping bean."

Cora was annoyed enough to finally look Farron in the eyes with a firm glare. She had always figured Farron never took her position seriously, and now the woman was basically admitting it herself. She didn't challenge Cora because she cared about the business—she was just bored. "So I'm just your entertainment? Everything here is just a game to you?"

Farron raised her brows. "Just because it's a job, doesn't mean it has to be a lifestyle. You can still be yourself. You can still do what you want. Haven't these last couple days proven that? That you can still have a little fun even here, in this cesspool of greasy fast food and flavored sugar water?"

For a moment, Cora wanted to argue. She wanted to defend her outlook, to insist that she didn't have much of a choice. She wanted to say that it was that exact mindset of not taking things seriously and doing what she wanted that put her in that situation in the first place. She wasn't going to make the same mistakes again, not when she had everything to lose.

Then she realized the truth: that's exactly what she had been doing. At some point, she had stopped taking her job seriously, too focused on challenging Farron to ridiculous competitions instead. Sure, it had started off as a way to show Cora's superior skill, but after a while, all she cared about was winning. She hadn't been thinking of it as work—she had been thinking of it as a game.

Before she could dwell on her mistake any longer, her stomach growled, loudly.

As her face grew warm, with no help from Farron's smirk, Cora quickly looked down at her own phone. She didn't have much longer to eat, and she wasn't about to waste her precious time arguing with someone that didn't care about their job.

"Sounds like at least a part of you isn't afraid to speak up," Farron said, unsuccessfully hiding a grin behind her hand. "Better get chewing, coffee cake. Wouldn't want you to choke again."

Cora answered by stuffing her mouth with more of her sandwich, channeling her annoyance into her glare. Sure, maybe Farron thought her way of doing things was superior—for now. But Cora was going to prove just how much it paid off to take her position seriously.